


Dead Men Talking (non-canon version)

by purplejabberwocky



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Gen, Mevolent's War era, The Dead Men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 35,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplejabberwocky/pseuds/purplejabberwocky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dead Men: Eight of the most powerful sorcerers in Mevolent's war.</p><p>They're also eight of the craziest.</p><p>NOTE: Due to the release of the eighth book, we now have a timeline for the Dead Men becoming a unit! Which means that some of these stories are either defunct entirely or need a revamp to line up with canon. So while I'm going to leave this file up for nostalgia reasons, I'm going to go ahead and remake 'Dead Men Talking' under the canon guidelines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Inception

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AmaraqWolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmaraqWolf/gifts).



> Spoilers for all books. This is a war-era setting, so violence warnings will be applicable in future chapters. It's also a series of short-stories in (occasionally) loosely chronological order.
> 
> Larrikin and Hopeless' first Taken names are not canon, but my headcanon only. Everyone's Given names, where applicable in later chapters, are also headcanon only. Please attribute if using.
> 
> Finally, I'm aware that Saracen Rue has appeared as a member of the Dead Men in 'Maleficent Seven'. However, in the sixth book his mention as a member is at the cost of Erskine Ravel--that is, Rue is mentioned as being among the seven, but Ravel isn't. Since it is stated that 'all' the Dead Men were present on that mission, this is obviously either an error or a hint, and I'm treating Saracen's existence accordingly. (Translated: I have plans. You don't get to know what they are until they happen. Hehehehehe.)

“You what?”

Corrival stared at Meritorious, not quite daring to be _entirely_ incredulous, but unable to keep the bulk of it off his face. He was aware that his response was less than articulate, but wasn’t able to prevent that either.

“I need you to command a set of squads for me,” Meritorious repeated. Corrival shook his head. Not in a negative; just with that incredulity he couldn’t contain, and in that second had given up trying to.

“No,” he said, “you want me to command _a_ squad which includes Skulduggery Pleasant, Erskine Ravel, Dexter Vex and Rover Larrikin.”

“And Ghastly Bespoke,” Meritorious pointed out. “And Anton Shudder too.”

“With all due respect, Grand Mage, they’re not going to be as much of a good influence as you’re hoping,” Corrival countered. Another man in his position might have grit his teeth, might have gotten angry or refused outright. Corrival gripped the back of his chair, channelled his shock and unease into that grip, and breathed deep. Discreetly.

Meritorious’s mouth quirked. He was old, older than nearly all the other rebels, but not old enough for _all_ his hair to be grey. Yet it was. It would have been a distinguished look, except for the tiredness and weight in the sorcerer’s eyes. “I know,” he admitted. “That’s why I’m adding my own man to the squad. You’ll have heard of him.” As Corrival had heard of all the rest, the younger sorcerer noted. “His name is Descry Hopeless.”

And there it was. Corrival didn’t choke, didn’t do anything but nod, but the action felt oddly distant through the numbness spreading in him. Descry Hopeless was the nearest thing Meritorious had to a spy. Or maybe he actually was one. No one knew for sure, or were even certain about what his Adept discipline was. All that had gone around was that Hopeless had a way of turning up information no one else seemed to be able to get. Not in ways that Skulduggery did, either.

Corrival had his suspicions. Especially since Hopeless hardly ever seemed to leave Meritorious’s side.

“You chose him for a reason, didn’t you?” Corrival asked bluntly. Not many dared to be so forward with the man who’d held the rebellion together.

Not many would expect that man to be as forthright back. Meritorious nodded. “I did.”

“You chose him to keep an eye on them all.”

“I did.”

“And on Skulduggery Pleasant.”

“Yes,” Meritorious said softly, “I did.”

He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t exactly have to. All the men chosen for this group knew one another, by reputation even if they hadn’t met personally. They were among the most powerful, if not the most authoritative, sorcerers of the rebellion. The most dangerous. The most unstable.

This endeavour was either going to be an unmitigated disaster or a magnificent success.

For a long moment they regarded each other in silence. Meritorious’s gaze was steady and tired, but not pleading. Corrival’s was understanding and resigned, and it was he who finally broke the silence. “Where are they now?”

“Just down the hall, I believe.”

With a short nod Corrival turned and strode out of the room to find his newest conscripts.

 

Well, this was certainly an interesting group. Anton surveyed the room from where he sat at the table, arms resting on the edge and hands clasped. It was angled so it wasn’t _quite_ between him and the rest of the room, but near enough that it could be a shield. Not that any of the others weren’t in like positions. Well, except for Larrikin, and even he was staying subtly in Anton’s field of defence.

Anton had a very wide field of defence.

That was probably why they others had, knowingly or unknowingly, given him a bit more space than they had each other. Despite himself he smiled slightly at the thought. It wasn’t an especially humorous smile.

The general tenor of the room wasn’t wary. Not exactly. But it was … cautious. Anton took another slow, sweeping look.

Rover Larrikin was leaning back against the table, his arms motioning this way and that in accompaniment to his never-ending chatter. He was talking about corsets. He didn’t usually expect anyone to actually respond, Anton least of all, but in this instance there were two in the room not only listening (Erskine Ravel) but _responding_ (Dexter Vex).

The former was leaning against the wall by the door, in the middle of a not-exactly-hidden laughing fit. Anton knew him passably well; he was Corrival Deuce’s right-hand man. No one was entirely sure if they were friends or merely comrades. Anton had heard a rumour going around that Ravel was Deuce’s son. Neither of them had confirmed or denied that fact. (However, when a prisoner of war had implied something else entirely, Erskine had come down extremely hard on him. So hard, in fact, that it was said the man was still coughing up water three days later.)

The latter was in one of the chairs nearest Anton’s table, leaned forward and smirking. Anton had met Dexter Vex before, for about five minutes. He’d now known him for another five, and already knew, with resignation, what sort of response he had ready. He wasn’t quite as open and flamboyant as Larrikin, but those ten minutes confirmed everything Anton had heard about the man’s flippant tongue.

Further across the room, shaking his head and with his lips compressed in a fashion which indicated that he was resisting his own smile, was Ghastly Bespoke. He was in the far corner from Anton, in the corner with the least light; Anton had taken just a moment longer than usual to notice he was there. Just as everyone else had, he imagined. It was the way Bespoke stood, several steps to the side and behind Skulduggery Pleasant, as if to let the dimness shroud him and his friend draw the attention off him.

Not that Anton didn’t understand why. When he’d first met the man even he had been hard-pressed not to stare for a few moments longer than necessary. Larrikin, of course, hadn’t even tried. They had been the last people to arrive and Larrikin had broken the silence in the room with a loud “Lugh’s balls, Bespoke, did you know you’ve got something on your face?”

At which point Anton had been obliged to drag him into the opposite corner. At which point Bespoke’s stunned and bemused silence had left no room for anger. At which point Ravel had at least had the restraint to _try_ and contain his amusement (and wound up snorting, at Larrikin put it, like a hog in heat). At which Vex had had no such restraint and collapsed into his chair in peals of laughter.

Not that Anton was worried about Bespoke. He’d met the tailor before, and frequently—they were bare-fisted sparring partners. Larrikin had never had the same opportunity.

It wasn’t Bespoke Anton was worried about;  the man had a long fuse. It was Skulduggery Pleasant. When Anton had cast a glance toward the man, he _thought_ the way the skeleton’s head was tilted spoke of amusement, but he couldn’t quite be sure given the sorcerer’s complete and utter stillness.

Skulduggery Pleasant seemed to take up most of the room, in fact. It wasn’t that he was in the middle of it. He had his chair situated at the back wall, a couple of feet from it to give him room to manoeuvre, clad in a well-tailored suit and with his arms and legs crossed. He looked like a gentleman awaiting attendance.

It was just that he was, well, a _skeleton_. And his presence came with everything that entailed. Every single man in the room had seen him at one point or another. _Seen_ him. He was impossible to miss. But it was rare that people actually got _close_ to him. At least, close enough to suggest that idle chitchat might even remotely be on the cards. Anton, like several of the others, had spoken to him previously, but usually only in the manner soldiers did when they were changing the guard or sharing information.

This was something else.

All of them were trying hard to ignore that elephant in the room. All of them except the last man—Descry Hopeless. Him, Anton had never met. Never met, but knew. He was the best-known spy in the rebellion; even _Mevolent’s_ forces seemed to know that he was an information broker, though no one knew just how he got his knowledge. The only difference between him and others, such as China Sorrows, was that his information went to one man and one man only. He was loyal to Meritorious and rarely left his side, it was said. What he was doing here, Anton didn’t know, but it implied something very important.

Hopeless was staring with a piercing sort of confusion at Skulduggery Pleasant, and had been ever since before Anton had entered the room. It would have been impossible for anyone to be unaware of it, but Pleasant hadn’t yet let on that he knew he had Hopeless’s full attention.

That was all of them. Seven men. Seven of the most powerful, the most well-known, sorcerers in the rebellion. Seven men in the room.

There were eight chairs. They were waiting on another.

Another who turned out to be, to Anton’s lack of surprise, Corrival Deuce himself. He didn’t burst through the door. It didn’t slam, and he wasn’t a surprise. They heard his footsteps approaching and then he strode through, pausing on the threshold to survey the room. Corrival Deuce was not a tall man, but he had a sort of no-nonsense presence. It was curious, Anton thought wryly, how each of them straightened in some small way. He even thought Skulduggery Pleasant might have.

Each of them excepting Erskine Ravel, anyway, who continued lounging against the wall up until Deuce’s eyes landed on him. The older sorcerer raised an eyebrow, Ravel shrugged, and then threw himself casually and irreverently into the nearest chair.

Deuce looked them over again and sighed. “I don’t suppose Eachan explained why the hell he called you all here?”

“Nope,” Ravel said with another shrug.

“Told me I’d find a harem at the end of the rainbow,” said Larrikin, “but this isn’t what I was imagining.”

Vex snickered. Deuce rolled his eyes. “Shudder, keep a leash on Larrikin before I decide he needs to be castrated.” Larrikin opened his mouth to reply. Without a flicker in expression Anton shoved the table and a squawk came out instead as Larrikin fought to keep his balance, clutching the desk. Deuce ignored him, and the pout he gave Anton, in favour of taking a third glance around, this time with an air of finality. “Anyone else?”

No one said anything. Deuce gave a short nod and stepped fully into the room, closing it firmly behind him. And then locking it.

That single action made a fission run through them. _Now_ they were all on guard, not because they suspected Deuce, but because there was something big happening here. Something huge, if all of them—these specific men, and General Corrival Deuce—were involved.

Deuce didn’t sit, Anton noticed. He was the only one who didn’t. Bespoke had quietly taken a chair beside Pleasant. Larrikin, still with that caste of an almost-smirk his mouth never quite lost, was sitting on the table, one leg drawn up, without obstructing Anton’s view.

“Gentlemen, you may have noticed the war’s at a stalemate,” Deuce said without preamble. “Therefore, Eachan’s decided to take a slightly different tack. A new division.”

Anton was listening. He was also watching. The sorcerer had served under several men in different capacities during this conflict. Like all the others in the room, he had never been under any _single_ command, but always a support for a greater group or worked alone (or with Larrikin). He had still been to briefings, however, often enough to be able to compare Deuce to others who held the same position.

Most of them, war-weary though they were, liked a bit of decorum. A bit of politics. Anton had heard stories about Deuce, rumours such as the time he had stood up in the middle of a three-day meeting to announce that, if they didn’t mind, he had better things to do. Like win a war. Or the time when he sent Ravel in his stead to another such meeting, and the meeting broke up after an hour because Ravel didn’t stop asking ‘why?’ after every sentence.

Basically, all rumours of Deuce portrayed him as a man who had no patience for politics. He was a man who got things done. The way he acted now only lent credence to that. He didn’t pace, but he didn’t sit; he looked each of them in the eye, one by one, as he spoke; he held himself loose and ready, off to the side of the door in the event someone burst in.

“This division will be focussed on underground warfare,” he said. “Infiltrations. Investigations. Raids. Assaults. Things we wouldn’t otherwise dare to even begin to plan.”

Ghastly Bespoke leaned forward in his chair, frowning as he asked, “Is the situation really that bad?”

“It’s not good,” Deuce said frankly, “and it’s time we start pulling out things Mevolent won’t expect. That means taking chances he, hopefully, won’t expect. And that is why you gentlemen are here.”

From the way nearly every man in the room shifted and glanced around, they all understood exactly what it was Deuce was saying. The war was dragging on, and Meritorious needed cannon fodder. Or at least people willing to attempt suicide missions. No wonder he’d called these men together. They were just powerful enough to possibly survive, and just crazy enough to give it a try.

“So what’s the plan, then?” Vex asked finally, looking an odd mix of intrigued, anticipatory and apprehensive. Deuce raised an eyebrow at him.

“Now? Now we find out who each of us are. Descry Hopeless.” Deuce leaned back against the door, and when he looked at Hopeless it was as though a torchlight had been cast on the man. “We’ll start with you, since you’re the one we know the least about.”

Anton tilted his head to look at Hopeless, half expecting the man to object being put so suddenly on the stage after spending so long off it. To his surprise, Hopeless was nodding in resignation.

“I was expecting that,” he said a bit absently, as if he was only partly there. He still hadn’t stopped staring at Skulduggery Pleasant. It was just that now Pleasant was looking back. At least, Anton assumed he was. It was hard to tell with the empty eye-sockets. “I can’t read you,” Hopeless said abruptly, and this was said directly to the skeleton. “I can read everyone else in this room. But I can’t read _you_.”

Pleasant tilted his head. “Read?” he asked, his voice smooth.

“I’m a mind-reader.”

Hopeless’s simple, soft pronouncement had the essential effect of a bolt of lightning in the middle of a field of dandelions. Anton was on his feet before he knew it, his every nerve alive with energy and his Gist rolling in his chest. Larrikin’s foot had dropped off the table; he was still seated, but now turned toward Hopeless in a casual sort of manner that left him between Hopeless and Anton himself.

Dexter Vex’s eyebrows were so high they may well have been on the roof. Ravel was glancing toward Deuce, not nearly as surprised as he should have been, but discomforted and not quite hiding it as well as he should have been able to. Deuce himself was just nodding, as if his suspicions had been confirmed. Ghastly Bespoke had risen slowly and was pale, the tension in his frame obvious. The only one who hadn’t moved was Skulduggery Pleasant, except to nod slowly in an echo of Deuce.

 _Of course,_ Anton thought through the buzz of adrenaline in his ears. _Of course, Pleasant would have figured that out. They say he was a detective._

A mind-reader. It was a wonder more people hadn’t worked it out, except that such a branch of magic was so esoteric, so difficult, so _absurd_ that well over half the population of sorcerers believed that claims of the discipline existing at all were just Sensitives in the distant past exaggerating their skill.

“Soooooo ...” The heavy silence was abruptly broken by Larrikin drawing the word out. Even from behind, Anton could see the speculative look on his face. “You’re a mind-reader. I don’t suppose I could ask a favour?”

“Rover, you may not ask the mind-reader to find out if the baker’s son has been pining after you,” Anton said automatically. The remaining weight in the air was abolished by Larrikin’s pout and Vex letting out a startled, but amused, laugh.

“Rosemary-scented buns, Anton!” Larrikin objected, gesturing wildly. “ _Rosemary-scented buns._ ”

Anton gave him an unimpressed look, arms folded across his chest, trying to force his heart to calm down again. His Gist, he was less gentle with; that, he coerced into reluctant submission, by degrees though it was.

“Not that I’d blame him or anything,” Larrikin continued, “because I’m definitely a catch, but—”

“That explains why I’ve heard of so many women throwing you back,” Pleasant said blithely.

Bespoke nodded. “You know what they say about small fish.”

Larrikin spluttered. Ravel and Vex laughed outright. Deuce lifted his eyebrow, but there was a suspicious gleam in his eyes, one that matched the one in Bespoke’s. Slowly, Anton made himself relax, and finally his Gist subsided with that simmering edge which always left a burn in his gut. By the time Ravel and Vex’s laughter had trailed into snickers, Anton was fully under his own control and had realised that Hopeless, for the first time, had moved his attention. To him.

Impassively Anton looked back, and after a moment Hopeless glanced away to Deuce just as the man cleared his throat and stepped forward.

“I thought it’d be something like that,” said the general with a nod in Hopeless’s direction. “Meritorious assigned you personally. This is a big risk. Either it’s going to blow up in all our faces or it’s going to blow up in Mevolent’s. Either way, we need all the help we can get to smooth things along. That being said—” And here his voice took on an abrupt sternness. “I have rules. I have standards. I expect each of you to follow them. I don’t care who you are, who you used to be, or whose orders you followed beforehand. You’re each of you mine now. My men. My rules.”

“Sir!” Larrikin’s hand shot up. Anton reached for his chair with a foot, gripped the edge of the table, and ‘accidentally’ gave it a hard yank as he pulled his chair closer to sit. With a squawk Larrikin tumbled off the table and hit the floor with a thud.

“Since you’re so eager, Larrikin,” Deuce said ironically, “Shudder can go next and introduce you both.”

Corrival Deuce, Anton decided, was a wise man. Larrikin was wheezing too much to object aside from raising a ‘hey wait a minute’ finger, and by then Anton was already speaking.

“Anton Shudder,” he said in his soft-spoken voice, matching the gazes of each of the men watching him one-by-one. Not all of them were. Bespoke was hiding a grin behind his hand and Vex was too  busy laughing, reaching out a hand to help Larrikin up. Bad move, Anton knew. The man would wind up on the floor himself in seconds. Anton raised his voice slightly to be heard over Vex’s surprised yelp and the scrape of his chair as Larrikin yanked him off it. “Adept. And Rover Larrikin. Elemental.”

He didn’t bother saying what his discipline was. They all knew. The whole rebellion knew. He’d been the only living Gist-user for well over a century.

“Could’ve spoken for myself,” Larrikin grumbled as he hauled himself upright using the edge of the table.

“The rest of us need some words to use, Rover.”

“Why? You hoard them like you’re planning to become a dragon when you grow up.”

Anton disdained to reply and instead turned his gaze expectantly on Erskine Ravel, since Dexter Vex was too busy trying to get to his feet.

“Erskine Ravel,” said the other sorcerer with a grin just a little too broad and reckless to indicate anything other than amusement. “Elemental.  You’re up, shieldbearer.”

Lightly he kicked Vex’s chair just as the man sat down, with the result that it struck the back of his knees and his ‘sit’ was more of a ‘sprawl’ which ended in the chair tipping over backward. Ravel caught it before it hit the floor, leaving Vex to blink up at him and then scowl.

Ravel raised his eyebrows at Larrikin. “You’ve got something catching, Larrikin. Now they’re falling for _me_.”

Larrikin nodded solemnly. “It’s contagious, that’s what it is. Nobody’s safe.”

“I’ll bet Pleasant is,” Vex pointed out, shifting his balance so the back of the chair was yanked out of Ravel’s hands and all four legs hit the floor with a thud. Speculatively the three men looked over at the skeleton. Skulduggery Pleasant, Anton thought, was an amazingly controlled man. Even Anton himself would have felt unnerved to have those three look at him like that, but the skeleton seemed unmoved.

Then again, he _was_ a skeleton. No face.

“It’s worth investigating,” Ravel mused. “Are skeletons affected by contagions if they’re magical?”

“We could always test it,” Larrikin suggested.

“With your lover-boy’s rosemary-scented buns?” Vex asked.

“He did scoff a lot of them yesterday,” Anton murmured.

Larrikin was spluttering all over again, and now Hopeless had joined him, choking on something that was either laughter or surprise. Anton wondered what he was reading from the minds around him and noted, mentally, the potential for a good cover to keep him from reading anything else. Corrival Deuce was rubbing his forehead as if he was wondering just why the hell he was in there and why he’d agreed to trying to put some kind of a leash on these men.

“No,” Pleasant said evenly.

“No what?” Vex asked innocently.

“Whatever you’re planning. No.”

“Not even in the name of discovery?” Bespoke asked, his lips twitching, and Pleasant’s head turned slightly to, Anton assumed, look at him.

“Do I insist on you ‘rediscovering’ your tailoring skills?”

“That depends. When did you last speak to my parents?”

“If all of you are finished being distracted,” Deuce said sharply, though less sharply, Anton thought, than he could have, “we can actually move on and start getting things done.”

Ravel coughed. “Sorry, Corrival. Vex, you’re up.”

He nudged the back of the chair with his foot, more gently this time, but Vex only turned and batted his eyelashes winsomely at the other sorcerer. “Not yet,” he said, “but for you, I could be.”

“ _Vex._ ” Corrival’s voice didn’t thunder, but it was raised and warning over the sound of Larrikin’s laughing fit. Anton, despite himself, felt his lips twitch. Maybe this meant Larrikin would start leaving him alone more often. Or maybe not. He’d see.

Grinning, Vex hopped up and bowed to the rest with a flourish. “Dexter Vex, Adept. Unlike our dour friend over there—” He jabbed a thumb at Anton. Anton frowned. “Or our psychic friend over _there_ —” This time the jab was at Hopeless. “I’ve no specific discipline. You could say I ... specialise, though.” The beat was accompanied with a little impish waggle of his fingers. “Conjuration, mostly.”

“Shieldbearer,” Pleasant murmured, and Vex bowed flamboyantly again.

“What can I say? Not everyone can wade into a battle hip-deep.”

It wasn’t entirely accurate, from all accounts. Anton had only met Vex twice, today included, but he’d seen him on the same battlefield a few times. Vex had indeed been able to conjure massive magical shields, capable of turning aside spells and elements, but he’d had his own method of attacking, too. It wasn’t a conjuration—conjured weapons weren’t much good against most sorcerers. Vex’s weapon had been a beam of energy, like some kind of malleable spear.

Ravel’s description was still apt. In the kinds of widespread skirmishes the war had seen so far, Vex’s shields had saved dozens of lives. This was different, however. Anton felt it was likely they’d see that energy-beam more often, if they were using underground warfare.

Deuce nodded shortly. “Corrival Deuce. Elemental.”

A bit hastily, Bespoke stepped forward. Just as well. Larrikin had just opened his mouth. “Ghastly Bespoke. Elemental.”

After Bespoke, it was Pleasant, who rose to his feet with a sort of casual grace a skeleton should not have had. “Skulduggery Pleasant. Also Elemental.”

“They outnumber us,” Vex stage-whispered to Anton. Anton surveyed the room. It was true. He, Vex and Hopeless were the only Adepts to the five Elementals.

“Technically speaking, Deuce is our leader, not a member,” he pointed out, and in a mild fit of mischief smiled a quiet, wolfish sort of smile. “And the others won’t outnumber us if I ever have reason to actually _use_ magic.” Vex choked a little.

“Just make sure you point it in Mevolent’s direction,” Deuce said dryly.

“I’ll toss the steak at him,” Larrikin promised with a broad, almost reckless grin.

“And keep your arse out of the firing line?” Hopeless asked without a hint of a smile except the glint in his eyes.

“Exactly.” Larrikin’s grin broadened. “It’s like I always say. Tread lightly and keep Anton on a leash.”

“Yeah?” Vex’s smile was wicked. “Which one of you’s wearing the collar?”

The room broke into laughter. Anton went so far as to smirk, even as he looked around at the others in the room. At Rover Larrikin, who had lunged at Vex, even while laughing, to try and mess up the blond’s hair. At Dexter Vex, laughing himself, half stumbling over his chair while he tried to resist. Erskine Ravel, leaping aside as they tumbled against his wall, calling out the odds for a ‘little wager’. Descry Hopeless took him up on that almost at once, his expression flickering with a tiny, lopsided grin as he rose to ‘get a better view’. In the corner, Ghastly Bespoke shifted closer, arms crossed as if to pull the pair apart, except that he was straight-faced as he upped the stakes—aside from a gleam in his eyes. Skulduggery Pleasant, leaning back in his chair and making predictions, but refusing to back them up with money. Corrival Deuce, standing beside the door, shaking his head and rubbing his face and utterly failing to hide the smile.

Seven—eight if you included Deuce—of the most powerful and best-known sorcerers in the rebellion, as much for their skill as for their eccentricities.

_I’m almost looking forward to this._

_~ finis_


	2. Icebreaker

There were times when Anton Shudder wondered how and why he let himself get into this. This was one of those times, and in fact, he wasn’t entirely sure just how he had come to be where he was. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising; Erskine Ravel and Dexter Vex were responsible. It was also at the beginning of their team’s conception. They had successfully completed two, admittedly minor, missions, and the pair had decided it was time for some livening up.

“We couldn’t find Bespoke,” Ravel said, one hand in his pocket and the other playing with the pocketwatch chained to his belt. “But we figured you’d do just as well to drag us out once we got too drunk to move.”

“Only if there’s no pretty ladies to lend us a shoulder, of course,” Vex added innocently, shoving open the door to _The Happy Leprechaun_ and  taking a deep breath as he stepped inside, spreading his arms as if to welcome the interior. “Ahhhh. Beer, mead and poitin. Is there anything better for post-mission blues?”

“I wasn’t aware you knew of any definition of that word other than the colour,” Anton said, stepping in after the other Adept and glancing around with an impassive face. Internally, he leashed his distaste. Simply because he wasn’t fond of taverns didn’t mean everyone else had to be as well, and although he had no intention of drinking—as they well knew; likely why they asked him to come along—better that someone be sober at the end of their night. _The Happy Leprechaun_ was a sorcerers’ tavern, and a relatively neutral one at that, which meant not everyone inside was strictly on the side of the rebellion.

But it would do for some relaxation, and their new headquarters wasn’t all that far away, which made it the nearest.

“That depends on how recently he got turned down in my favour,” Ravel said with a grin, clapping a hand to Vex’s shoulder.

“That was the fault of Larrikin’s disease,” Vex objected, and Anton tuned out their friendly banter in favour of keeping an eye on their surroundings, his step light and near-silent in contrast to their ambling and loud-footed pace. Ravel and Vex were men who didn’t care if they were noticed—who enjoyed being noticed, even.

And they were noticed. They were very much noticed. Not everyone stopped and looked, or at least looked overtly, but there were flickers—eyes darting, conversations pausing, wariness abounding. One or two of the patrons let their gazes rest on the three, but where Ravel and Vex pretended not to notice, Anton matched those gazes with a lazy sort of gracefulness and waited for them to turn away again.

Even as he passed, the sorcerer noted those faces and made a mental tally. Just in case. Any one of Meritorious’s new group would be worth quite a bit of money from Mevolent’s side, if only they could be gotten—dead or alive.

By the time Vex slapped a hand to the counter, it was hardly loud enough to be heard over the resuming hubbub. “Three meads,” he said to the barkeep, having caught the man’s attention with the sound.

“Two meads and a milk,” Anton corrected. Both Vex and Ravel turned to look at him in disbelief.

“Milk?” Vex demanded incredulously. “ _Milk_? If you’re not going to drink, at least get some cider, man!” Anton said nothing, looking at him steadily, but then he glanced away. Vex took it, correctly, as assent and nodded in satisfaction. “Two meads, one non-alcoholic cider,” he said to the barman, and then sat, leaning back against the counter to glance around the room. “Sooooo. What have you seen so far, Erskine?”

He didn’t speak in undertone, but in that cheerful manner of someone avoiding attention. People listened to the tone more than words in a tavern this loud; there was no other way to easily divine what was necessary and interesting to listen to. Of course, it meant that if one was savvy, they could avoid having someone interested in listening at all, just by pretending they weren’t talking about anything interesting.

“Two blondes and a redhead,” Ravel said promptly, drumming his fingers on the counter and grinning at Vex. “Past your left shoulder, in the corner.”

Sliding casually onto a stool, using the motion as a pretence to look, Anton took a few moments to find the women to which Ravel was referring. Longer than it should have, mostly because only one was a woman. For a moment Anton frowned, thinking that in spite of all their jokes neither Ravel nor Vex had struck him as that type, before he abruptly recognised one of the men as a low-level member of Mevolent’s army. Nothing could be proven—Meritorious had strict rules about proof of allegiance before striking—but everyone knew that anything spoken carelessly in front of Able Destitute almost always found its way back to the other side. After another moment, Anton recognised Destitute’s companion too, though not his name.

“Well, you’re the connoisseur,” Vex was saying. “What say you?”

Ravel hummed a bit as if in consideration. “Disappointing. In my estimable opinion they’d talk a good talk and put on a good show, but fall flat while walking.”

An adequate description of said men, Anton thought with more surprise than he cared to admit.

“Scratch them, then,” Vex said with an affected sigh, surveying the room and wiggling his fingers with a charming grin at one of the waitresses across the way. In spite of that ridiculous motion, Anton found that something in him had relaxed.

They were taking this seriously. The group was still new, still figuring out how they worked together and each individual’s quirks. Right here and now Anton was relieved that this pair of reprobates weren’t quite as uncaring as they appeared, and that the stories were correct in labelling them intelligent—intelligent enough to use their own flirtatious ways as a cover for their own safety. He should still keep watch, because they made it clear they _intended_ to get drunk, but maybe less than he’d been anticipating.

So it was that Anton felt as if he, also, could lean back against the counter, observing the crowd of patrons with less intensity than when he’d entered. Ravel was keeping an eye on the drinks (a smart man, of which they were three, asked to see their drinks poured even on neutral ground like this), so when they came Anton thought nothing of accepting his. Incorrigible his companions might be, but he could trust them with that much, at least.

In spite of all their teasing, Ravel and Vex seemed content to only throw comments at Anton every now and then—involving him in the conversation where they felt it would be amusing, but otherwise allowing him to simply observe and pitch in on his own merit. Once they had a quick drinking contest, which Vex claimed loudly that Anton had to join despite not drinking anything stronger than cider; with a flat stare belied by the faint amusement in his eyes, Anton complied.

One round of drinks was followed by another, and then another, and then another again. Anton matched the others drink for drink, even non-alcoholic as his were. Over the course of those rounds, he felt himself relaxing. Maybe this had been a good idea after all.

In fact, he was beginning to feel as if it was a downright excellent one.

 

Rover Larrikin was pretty sure it violated some kind of morality rule to be having fun during a war. War was about pain, and suffering, and strife, and evil, and absolutely no truly _good_ man should be having the time of his life.

 _So I’ll just be a not-quite-good man,_ Rover thought with a shrug, whistling as he worked his way between the tents. It wasn’t that Rover enjoyed the bloodshed, or even the fighting. He liked a bit of mischief, tweaking peoples’ noses, and objecting to a madman while simultaneously refusing to die in spite of all efforts came under that heading.

So, yes. A bit of fun, a bit of satisfaction, out of an otherwise awful situation. Making the best of it. It was what Rover did, and it was better than letting Mevolent win through mental attrition, which was the other and very real danger. Rover always had been good at avoiding that particular fate.

An orphan, Rover had no idea whether his parents had been sorcerers or not, and didn’t much care. He didn’t remember them and saw no point in wasting energy missing something he hadn’t had and couldn’t change not having. He’d done it all as a kid. He’d been a thief, he’d been a whore, he’d been a slave, a pirate, an actor. Hell, he’d been to the New World as a crewman pressed into service at fifteen. The only thing that had been anything more than pure survival had been the second-to-last, when he’d spent two glorious years attached to a puppeteer’s troupe.

Right up until he’d made the unfortunate choice to use magic against a group of highwaymen, but eh. He couldn’t blame the troupe for thinking he was the spawn of Satan. At that age, he hadn’t been too sure they were wrong either. They couldn’t know any better, and as enjoyable as their company had been, all of them—himself included—had known there was a  barrier there none of them could hope to surmount. Rover was used to being alone by then, and he could use those skills alone too.

The thing about the war was that he wasn’t alone. Oh, sure, before it had been him and Anton for quite a while, and Rover enjoyed that. He had kept waiting for Anton to tell him to leave off and mean it, and every day the man didn’t was like a gift. (And there was a period there where Rover had to admit, ruefully, that he’d tried hard to make it happen, sure that it would anyway.)

So the very last thing Rover was expecting was to find more people who not only tolerated him, as people had his whole life, but seemed to appreciate his banter, even if it was in different ways. This group Deuce had put together ... they were the most eclectic group of people in the universe. They’d only been on two missions together. Sure, there were rough edges, but there was something else too—an energy. An awareness. A common goal and mentality, something which tied them together even in these early days. For the first time in his life Rover felt like he _had_ a home.

Which was why he was whistling. Which was why he was having something approaching ‘fun’ while in a warzone. Which was why he was, of his own accord, actually seeking out the others after a period of voluntary self-reflection to figure out what was going on and whether he cared. The answer, obviously, had been that he did. Enough to give trusting more than one person at once a go.

None of them were at the diceboards, which was frankly a surprise, seeing as that was where Ravel spent most of his time. Not that Rover didn’t frequent them himself, of course. They had never played each other, though; they’d always skirted around each other like a courting couple figuring out where the boundaries lay. True dice-playing wasn’t about luck. It was about who cheated better, the least obviously, and had the best showmanship. Rover and Ravel had been eyeing each other off for months without making a move. With a hint of regret  Rover turned away from fleecing a poor fool to search elsewhere.

He found, to his surprise, Bespoke, Pleasant and Hopeless outside Hopeless’s tent. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, because where everyone else danced around delicate topics like pagans around a campfire, Pleasant—like Rover—was more forthright. Rover had already pestered Hopeless to within an inch of his life, but Pleasant apparently had more questions to ask. Or maybe, Rover amended when the chessboard came into view around Ghastly’s bulk, Hopeless had wanted to follow up on that ‘skeletons being unreadable’ issue he’d mentioned.

Hopeless was concentrating on the board. Pleasant was looking God-knew-where, but he looked as if he was staring at Hopeless, unutterably still. Rover shivered. He couldn’t have taken the weight of that non-existent gaze. Actually, Pleasant gave him the creeps far more than Hopeless did. Rover had nothing inside him of which he was ashamed, so Hopeless’s magic didn’t worry him. Pleasant, on the other hand, was a symbol of all the ways one’s life could really, truly screw up, poor bastard. They weren’t even talking a matter of plain mortality. Rover wasn’t scared of dying. This was a matter of something beyond that.

Rover came up soft-footed behind Bespoke and leaned forward over his shoulders. “Who’s winning?”

Nearest thing to an electric shock Rover could produce. Bespoke bolted upright so fast his fists were already swinging as he turned, and the only reason Rover managed to dance away in time was due to countless hours of avoiding boxed ears as a boy. He was laughing as he did it, though. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been expecting the reaction. “You’re _fast_ , Bespoke,” he crowed. “Faster than Vex on the pull, I reckon.”

Ghastly scowled at him and then down at both Pleasant and Hopeless, neither of whom had batted an eyelash. “Why didn’t you tell me he was there?”

“Good practice for you,” Pleasant said in the tone of a man concentrating on something else. The odd thing about those words, Rover reflected, was that they sounded as if they were flippant but were turned sideways enough to be not. Pleasant did that a lot. Like he was moving through a routine with no life in it, pun not intended but metaphor absolutely so. “Your mother would agree.”

“You’re not my mother,” Ghastly muttered, sitting back down again. Daring to be mischievous, whatever Anton thought about Bespoke’s best friend, Rover put his elbows on the man’s shoulders and leaned over to see the board. He felt Ghastly sigh, but the man didn’t cast him off and Rover grinned. He opened his mouth.

“It’s one apiece,” Hopeless answered without looking up. “Pleasant, I admit, is a better player, but—” He grinned suddenly, a quick wry little thing, at the skeleton. “—he reckoned without Ghastly’s familiarity with him.”

Pleasant’s head tilted just so. “You realise that reading Ghastly’s mind in lieu of mine is still cheating.”

Hopeless shrugged. “No such thing in war.”

“This is chess.”

The mind-reader smiled grimly, slowly, his gaze firmly on Pleasant’s eye-sockets. “Is it? How badly do you want to kill me right now, Skulduggery?”

The skeleton made no answer, and the longer there was no answer, the more powerful the chill down Rover’s back ran. Then, very slowly and without looking away from Hopeless’s face, Pleasant leaned forward and moved a pawn. “Checkmate.”

Hopeless laughed. This was, Rover felt, one of the very few times it was an inappropriate reaction. Of course, Hopeless probably knew he was thinking that, but just to keep up appearances he drawled, “Mind-readers are masochists. I’ll keep that in _mind_.”

Ghastly groaned. “If you’re looking for Anton, apparently Vex and Ravel dragged him off to _The Happy Leprechaun._ ”

Rover shrugged in a way that might have been casual if not for the grin. “Naw. I figure he’ll be safe enough at their tender mercies.”

“That depends on how much alcohol they fill him with,” Hopeless said dryly, resetting the chessboard to default. Rover opened his mouth to answer before the words even sank in, but then they did and he froze, his throat locking up.

Anton. With Vex and Ravel. In a tavern.

Anton knew better than to drink. Therefore, Vex and Ravel were going to trick him, and Anton would fall for it because Rover _knew_ that he was the only friend Anton had ever had and he would never, _ever_ trick Anton like that. But now, suddenly, there were others who could potentially be friends. Others Anton might trust to not pull that trick, just because they _were_ friends.

Quite abruptly Rover was aware that Hopeless had risen, ashen-faced, and was staring at him, reading all the images forefront in Rover’s head. Rover swallowed. “I have to go.”

He had to go save Vex and Ravel from themselves, and Anton from their ruining his life. Without another word he spun on his heel and _ran_ , dodging between tents and men, hardly aware of footsteps echoing his from behind.

 

Dexter liked to think he wasn’t a bad man. He was just ... opportunistic. Occasionally ignored that there might be consequences. And, right now, as he exchanged a smirk with Erskine’s wink while setting a new cup in front of Shudder, congratulating himself on a job well done. The alcoholic cider was watered down with the non-alcoholic cider, and Shudder was still already almost four sheets to the wind. Lightweight; he’d really needed this unwinding, obviously.

“Surprised Larrikin hasn’t already pulled this one,” Dexter whispered to Erskine, leaning in as if to tell a joke. Erskine thoughtful, shrugged and laughed.

“Maybe we’ll ask him when we pour Shudder into his tent for the night.” He grinned as he raised his cup. “Got the rosemary oil ready?”

Dexter snorted and rose, eyes on the very pretty little blonde waitress just across the way. He, at least, did not intend to be alone in his bed tonight. Of course it was just as he turned to manoeuvre past the nearest table that one of the idiots who’d been drinking a lot more than Shudder decided to make himself known. Because, quite suddenly, Dexter found himself face-to-chest with a very tall and broad sorcerer swaying on his feet.

“Heard you’re meant to be some loud hotshot with the war,” said the man, breathing like an angry ox and glaring. The table beside them went quiet. Dexter wrinkled his nose at the bad mead on the man’s breath and then smiled sunnily.

“Nope! You must be thinking of some other loud hotshot. Excuse me, friend. I do have  a conquest I intend to make tonight.” He made to try and sidle his way past the man, sensing more than hearing Ravel turn toward them to cover his back, but the man didn’t budge. The opposite; he reached forward to seize Dexter’s lapels, yanking him forward. “You’re wrinkling my tunic,” Dexter murmured, surreptitiously spreading his fingers and flattening his palm toward the floor. Just in case.

This close, Dexter could see the man’s bloodshot eyes—bloodshot from more than mere drinking. His hands trembled, too, even as firm as his grip was. The man sneered. “You bastards fighting think you’re all that. That because you have the magic and talent and the balls to stand up to each other you’ve got the right to walk around anywhere you wanna go, and damn the consequences. Well, I’m telling you, you _can’t_.”

He shook Dexter and the sorcerer felt his teeth rattle, but there was something in the grip, a shaky edge, which made Dexter close his hand again. The accent was hard to pick through the slur, slight as it was, but Dexter thought it hailed from the Scottish Highlands. He was far from home. Dexter waved behind him without looking away and felt Erskine hesitate.

There was grief in the stranger’s eyes. Grief and unshed tears, and the thousand-yard stare of a man who’d lost everything. Dexter, and the rebellion, and Mevolent’s army, had been in Scotland only a few months ago. Maybe the man had travelled here planning to join  the rebellion himself before he got drunk enough to speak his real thoughts.

“No, we don’t,” he agree quietly, reaching up to grip the man’s wrist lightly, unthreateningly. His fingers looked barely like toothpicks. The man blinked down at it; Dexter slid his grasp to make sure the man could feel his calluses, see how his nails were torn and ragged, the dirt under them. Dexter hated having his nails in this condition, but with the situation being what it was, no one had time for proper manicures. A man could wear a flash outfit, but his hands told the true story. Dexter’s—and Erskine’s, and Shudder’s, and every other man who took the war seriously—were callused and filthy, the lines stained with grime he couldn’t scrub. The hands of a hard worker.

“Come on, friend.” He smiled and it was brittle, sympathetic. Gentle. “I came in here to put the war away for a few hours. Join me and mine for a mug or three, yeah? We’ll curse it together.”

For a moment Dexter could see the waver, the fact he’d won the man over. His grip slackened and his face started to crumble.

Then one of the idiots at the table laughed shortly. “Yeah, right,” he said with a snort, tossing a card onto the table. His voice sounded familiar, and although Dexter didn’t glance over, from Erskine’s warning hiss Dexter knew the man was from the other side. Fanning the flames. “I’ve heard of you, Dex Vex. I’ve seen a whole God-damned farmhouse fizzle right out of existence under your lightbeam.”

It was the word ‘farmhouse’ which made something in Dexter’s new friend’s eyes shatter. The man’s face tightened, and so did his grip.

 _Shit_.

Dexter made to pull himself away as the fist rose, and as he did he felt hands on his coat yanking him back almost into Ravel’s lap. “Falling for me again, Dex?” Erskine said with a tight grin. “I’m flattered, really.”

“Maybe in your dreams, Erskine,” Dexter said with a snort, pushing himself upright. The stranger was still blocking the aisle, shaking with rage and grief.

“You—” The man’s voice shook and he stepped forward, and Dexter braced himself for a fight. Then he abruptly found himself staring at Anton Shudder’s back, listening to the strangled noise as the Gist-user yanked the stranger forward.

“I don’t like you,” Shudder said in a quiet, coldly calculated tone of which Dexter hadn’t known he was capable. The Gist-user’s shoulders rolled and next thing Dexter knew the farmhand, nearly twice again Anton’s width, had crashed down onto the table on the other side of the one next to them. “In fact,” Anton continued in that soft voice, a voice that made chills run down Dexter’s spine, “I don’t like most of you. _You’re_ Mevolent’s.” He pointed Able Destitute, not accusing but matter-of-factly condemning. “And so are you. And you. And _you_.”

The last was breathed, that finger slow and predatory in the air as it landed on the suddenly terrified-looking man with the cards.

“Uh oh,” Erskine breathing at almost the same time. Dexter dragged his stare from Anton to find the Elemental looking down at their three empty mugs on the counter. Something turned over in Dexter’s gut as Erskine lifted his gaze to Dexter’s. “I think our plan may have worked just a little too well.”

There was some kind of terrified realisation in Erskine’s eyes, something which was still eluding Dexter. The Adept was still trying to figure out what it was when Erskine stepped forward to take Anton’s elbow.

“Okay, I think that’s enough excitement for one—” The moment Erskine’s hand touched Anton a fission ran through the Gist-user and Dexter just barely managed to jump aside in time before Erskine went flying back, tumbling over the counter and hitting the rush-covered floor with a thud and a cry of pain.

Quite suddenly Anton was facing them with a snarl, his fists clenched and that particular feverish glitter of booze and bloodlust in his eyes. “ _Stay out of my way!_ ”

He whirled back around again and even with thoughts like ‘I’m insane’ and ‘I’m a dead man’ spiralling in his head Dexter found himself vaulting over the rapidly emptying table beside them.

“Hey, hey, hey!” he exclaimed, now the only thing standing between Anton and the room at large, his hands raised pacifyingly and without any idea what he was meant to do. Visions of Shudder’s Gist swam through his mind, visions of those tearing claws and shrieking maw and bloodshot eyes that glowed with hatred. Dexter had seen the aftermath of Shudder’s Gist once before. Even a by-then hardened veteran, he’d been sick. And not the only one either. His brain froze as it properly caught up to the thought that had struck Erskine earlier.

 _Yep. I_ am _gonna die._

Luckily, maybe, his mouth was more obliging. “Come on, Anton, is it really worth destroying such a fine establishment as this to get rid of a few cockroaches? I mean—”

The words died in his mouth as he realised that Anton was shaking, curled inward like he’d been taken by a fit of mirth. Dexter knew he hadn’t been. With a curse the Adept jumped back, his hands snapping up once more but this time with a pulse of translucent light that surged between him and Shudder in a shield of energy, too hurried to have the usual sleekness and scrolling artwork Dexter liked to put into his conjurations. In the same moment Shudder’s back arched and then he shot sideways, slamming against the wall with such force that some of its planks cracked. Out of the corner of his eye Dexter saw Erskine pull himself upright, breathing hard and face white, hand still extended.

A snarl came from where Shudder was braced against the wall, a snarl that was inhuman and made Dexter’s skin prickle wildly. There was no time to do anything or even try to solidify his shield. Shudder’s back arched and his Gist began to erupt from his chest, shrieking and fanged, its hair wild and claws reaching.

The tavern doors slammed open and a barrel came through it, a barrel moving so fast that it shot over the heads of anyone stupid enough to still be at the tables anywhere in the vicinity. Dexter just caught a glimpse of something odd about its planks, something that looked like frost, before it collided squarely with the Gist. The barrel ruptured like a plum hitting cobblestone.

Water—or maybe it was wine; Dexter couldn’t tell—exploded over Shudder, over both of him, and he staggered back into the wall with a gasp. It was only then that Dexter saw the liquid was white, flecked with shards of ice. Half-frozen. Numbly he looked toward the door and saw Larrikin darting inside, followed a moment later by another soaring barrel with Bespoke’s burly silhouette behind it. Larrikin’s hand slapped down onto the barrel and with crackle of ice shattering it frosted over so fast it left a blowback of cold air around it.

It was hard to tell just who was sending the barrel toward Shudder, but the Gist-user was still clutching the wall when the barrel hit just over his head, frozen water cascading over him like a surging waterfall. His knees buckled under its weight, his form almost obscured by the ice, and Dexter heard the thud as he hit the ground.

Then there was silence. Silence as Larrikin, breathing hard, stepped between the tables and fallen chairs toward Shudder. Bespoke, Hopeless and Pleasant were through the door next, but where Bespoke stopped to look around the room, and Hopeless paused in the doorway with his gaze trained on Anton, Skulduggery moved into the tavern, reaching down to pick up a piece of frosted wood. Dexter found, when he dropped them and his shield, that his hands weren’t exactly still. He glanced toward Erskine and saw the Elemental leaning on the counter, gripping his shoulder and his face pale.

Anton groaned and shifted under the timber, and without thinking Dexter took a rather unsteady step forward to see him. Larrikin had already stooped to pull shards of barrel off him, to help him upright against the wall, and Dexter saw Shudder blinking with confusion. The Gist-user mumbled, “Rover? What happened?”

Dexter’s body went weak with relief and the Adept sagged against the nearest table. He was okay. Shudder was okay and in control of himself.

“You’re drunk, Anton,” Larrikin said in a business-like tone edged with a weird sort of gentleness.

“I don’t drink,” Anton said, his quiet voice slurred. Larrikin looked up, then, and the look of cold fury on his face was so cutting that it made Dexter take a step back, bumping up against another table, his heart suddenly pounding.

“Yes,” Larrikin said icily, “I know. Come on, Anton, let’s get you back to camp.”

“Let me—” Dexter automatically stepped forward, but Larrikin’s head snapped around and this time he _growled_ , a sound so much like Shudder’s Gist that Dexter felt his heart suddenly lodged in his throat. Shudder pushed down against the wall, Larrikin pulled an arm over his shoulder and heaved, and between the two they managed to get the shivering Adept on his feet and stumbling toward the door.

“You turned water to ice,” Skulduggery said quietly as they passed, holding out a piece of thawing wood to Bespoke but with his eye-sockets aimed at Larrikin. “How did you do that?”

“Mind your own God-damned business!” Larrikin snarled as they reached the door. Hopeless stepped quickly aside to let them through, and a moment later they were gone.

 

Rover’s hands were trembling as he guided Anton through the tents, a bit clumsy with the sheer disbelief and rage. Rover had done this many times before. He’d just never done it with _Anton_ —not after the night they first met. It was hard, through the pounding fury, to keep his own feet. To not trip blindly. To keep Anton steady. Even harder because of the way Anton was wracked with shivers, his skin ice-cold, his clothes still drenched and dripping. Rover didn’t dare dry them. Not yet. Not until he was sure Anton was closer to sleep than uninhibition.

Rover’s foot caught on a line and he stumbled, cursing Dexter Vex and Erskine Ravel every way to Hell he knew.

“Rover,” Anton mumbled, and Rover gripped him tighter before he could slide to the ground. “C- cold.”

“I know, Anton.” Damn them. Damn them. _Damn_ them. Hadn’t he just been thinking that these men were trust-worthy? He’d been getting ahead of himself. He should have _known_ better. There were many men in the camp, in the rebellion, but just because they shared experiences and watched for each others’ lives didn’t make most of them anything other than incidental comrades. Stupid, stupid.

Pebbles crunched under their shoes, the flickering light of torches sending their shadows scattering ahead of them.

“Bal—Ballinasloe?”

“No. We’re closer to Dublin.”

He’d failed. He’d failed the one person he had _promised_ he never would, because Anton was the one person who had ever let Rover stay. Rover hadn’t even understood why for over a decade, afraid to ask, until finally his confusion had overridden his fear.

_“Why haven’t you thrown me off your back yet?”_

_Rover hadn’t meant to say anything. He’d just been leaning back in his chair, keeping perfect balance on two rickety legs, and watching Anton work. The other man was bent over one of Rover’s shoes, his long hair knotted back. Rover had wriggled his toes, idly wondering if Anton could darn socks as easily as he cobbled, or cooped, or milled, or laboured, or any of the many honest trades Rover had never bothered to learn. He’d always wondered why Anton hadn’t settled down with something he could do. He was a jack-of-all-trades—he could have done anything._

_And before Rover could stop it, the question had been out._

_For just a moment the Elemental hoped—feared—that Anton wouldn’t answer. Or, worse, that he would realise there was no reason for him to be sitting in a ramshackle tavern-room, waiting for the Guard to give up looking for them, and in the meantime cobbling a shoe belonging to the man who’d raised their ire in the first place. In fact, Rover had halfway convinced himself that he hadn’t even spoken—so Anton’s low, measured voice came as a complete surprise._

_“You remind me of one of my brothers.”_

_He hadn’t even looked up, his strong fingers pushing the thick needle through leather and then out again. Rover stared, torn between the certainty he’d imagined the words and the warmth in his chest that was proof that he hadn’t. Then, abruptly, something occurred and his smile vanished almost before it had arrived. “That’s a good thing, right?”_

_”I had six younger brothers,” Anton answered, patiently threading the needle. “One of them, the third-youngest, was constantly being thrown out of taverns and hauled out of the gutter. I lost count of how many times I had to bribe one of the Guard to let him out of gaol or pay some baron’s vassal to release him from bonded labour.” Rover watched, speechless and pale, as Anton lifted his shoe to the dim lantern, examining it critically. “He was also,” Anton continued more softly, “the only one of my nine siblings who cast no stones when they saw what I was capable of.”_

_Rover stared, open-mouthed, his brain so frozen that it took him a moment to see the tilt of Anton’s head in his direction, the glint of amusement in his dark eyes, the faintest quirk of a fondly melancholic smile. It wasn’t as distant as he would have thought. Rover swallowed once, twice, and again, and then croaked, “Oh.” There was a long period of silence while Rover wrestled with the warmth of pride, the shock, the cold of sudden terror that he might disappoint Anton in some way. Finally he gave up and blurted, “What happened to him?”_

_“He died,” Anton said simply and obviously, because Anton was almost a century old and mortals didn’t live that long. “He was stabbed in an alley after pickpocketing the wrong person.”_

_“Why weren’t you there?” Rover demanded as something turned over in his stomach. Anton wasn’t the kind to let someone down. The Adept looked up and gazed unseeingly into the wall as if it was a mirror into his past, fingering the needle the way a man might a blade._

_“Because the last time we met, not long after our youngest sister had been turned down by a suitor’s parents, he had figured out that the demon protecting them was me and sworn to me that I would not exist to him if I didn’t stop casting such a pall over their good name.”_

_Of course. No one was going to marry their daughter into, or accept a wife from, a family they knew was cursed. Rover’s breath caught so sharply that he felt real pain in his chest even as the warmth bloomed, and suddenly he could hear what Anton hadn’t said. He didn’t remind Anton of his brother, really. He didn’t because even that brother had placed conditions on him in the end. Because he had seen Anton as another way to rebel against all the expectations of society, up until it had cost someone else he cared for more. And Rover found himself laughing with irony and delight, because in the end Anton hadn’t tossed Rover out on his ass for the very same reasons Rover had stayed._

Rover blinked rapidly, trying to pretend the burn in his eyes was due to the smoke of the torches. He just barely managed not to stumble over another rope, grunting as he propped Anton up. He’d been an idiot, thinking someone else existed who could understand them. “You know what, Anton? I reckon we’ve done enough for the war-effort.” He strove for light-heartedness; his voice came out shaking. “I reckon we should head off again, just the two of us. You know, like old times. What say you?”

“I’m going to be sick,” Anton said weakly, and Rover couldn’t help the short bark of surprised laughter.

“Right. Well, better hold the carriage, then.” They stopped near a short tree and Rover supported Anton around the shoulders, holding back the Gist-user’s hair until Anton had finished heaving up all the cider he’d never meant to drink. The sight of Anton’s back arching, the quivers, left a cold burn of determination in his gut. When Anton had finally straightened, pale and breathless and trembling but eyes clearer, and Rover put an arm around his back to guide him toward their tent, the Elemental promised them both silently that this would not happen again.

 

From a distance Erskine watched, leaned up against the camp barricade, as Larrikin and Shudder lurched away. All he’d meant to do was rest a moment, trying not to submit to the rolling nausea caused by the pain which radiated down his dislocated shoulder. After the sudden terrified awareness of what they’d done, there wasn’t any alcohol left in his system to take the edge off. He could bear it, if he stayed still, and only meant to get to his tent as soon as possible so he could do that. Only now he couldn’t.

Erskine looked longingly at his tent, barely visible as a shape in the darkness. Then he grit his teeth and pushed himself upright, his pace precise and steady but body trembling as he followed the path in-between the canvas and lines to where Corrival’s was staked—fortunately nearby. Later he would wonder how long it had taken him and yet never remember the exact journey. It was all a blur of pain and guilt and pure determination in a way a good night should never have turned into. Of course, they always did, didn’t they?

Either way, he finally stumbled in through the tent-flaps, gripping the pole at the front and panting with exertion, his vision wavering in and out of focus. It was still enough for him to see Corrival look up and then leap up from his foldable desk with a curse.

“What happened?” the general demanded, at Erskine’s side almost before Erskine was aware. Erskine was glad, because the pole wasn’t really capable of holding his weight, and Corrival was guiding him toward his own chair. That was the good thing about Corrival, Erskine decided through the haze of pain. Most generals at least pretended their men came first, but Corrival really did it. Giving up his own chair.

Blurrily he groped for its back and lowered himself into it, keeping his side very still, as Corrival tore open the tent-flap and snapped at some poor passing sorcerer to fetch one of the healers.

“What happened?” Corrival asked again when he let the flap drop and came back to Erskine. Erskine was bent over, leaning on the flimsy table as much as he dared, breathing carefully and slowly to bring himself back under control. “You weren’t on a mission tonight.”

“No,” Erskine said, and cast a weak, forced grin up at his oldest friend. “I’m afraid Dexter and I did something very, very stupid.”

“Again, you mean?” Corrival said with a snort, leaning over to examine Erskine’s shoulder himself. His fingers, though callused and large, were gentle. Not gentle enough to keep pain from arcing down Erksine’s arm and into his chest, and the Elemental gasped, a sort of strangled gasp made when the pain stole the air.

“More than usual,” he said, his voice as strangled as the inhale. “We got Shudder drunk.”

He was sitting rigid in the chair, leaning on the backrest but not putting his full weight on it. He was still angled enough to see the puzzlement on Corrival’s face. Because Corrival, like Dexter and Erskine, probably like everyone else, didn’t know enough to think anything of a man getting drunk. Tricks, pranks, hazing. Spiking drinks wasn’t an odd thing at all. Why would it be? How could they know?

Larrikin had known. And they, Erskine admitted bitterly, should have as well. Shudder was a God-damned Gist-user. Everything Erskine had heard about them said they usually came on their Gists by accident, almost, rather than by design. A need for the power of rage and hatred, without quite knowing what they were signing up for. Which was why most of them died so young.

“He almost unleashed his Gist.”

Erskine felt, more than saw, Corrival go rigid beside him, but the general’s tone was careful. “You make it sound like he did it deliberately.”

“He did,” Erskine said, exhaling slowly and then inhaling. “Sort-of. He was four sheets to the wind, Corrival. We should’ve guessed—it might lose him control of his Gist.”

Corrival let out a breath and raised a hand to rub his eyes. “Damn it.” Resignation. Frustration. He knew Erskine was right. Hated the fact that he hadn’t thought of it either. “What stopped him? I’ve seen Shudder’s Gist, Erskine. Once it’s out, it’s out. There’s no stopping it.”

“Larrikin did it,” Erskine said, and closed his eyes, finally allowing himself to sink back into the chair. It was uncomfortable at the best of times, but leaning made agony spark down his arm again, enough that Erskine drew blood in his lip to keep the cry of pain inside. The world spun around him, but he felt a hand on his uninjured shoulder, the light pressure that pulled him back against Corrival’s side. Much better. Much more comfortable than that bloody chair, anyway.

“You make a nice backrest, Corr,” he mumbled, and a moment later Corrival’s fingers tapped his jaw-line.

“Stay awake, Ravel.” There was a note of command there, but the dominant tone was a mix of exasperation and fondness. It was for the sake of the last that Erskine forced his eyes open, inhaling deeply and carefully.

“I’m awake.”

“Good man.” The fingers fell to his good shoulder and squeezed. The pressure made it easier; gave him something other than the pain on which to focus. “You said Larrikin stopped Shudder’s Gist. How?”

Right. Answering questions. That should make it easier too. Another breath, and Erskine found the words. “He turned water to ice. Don’t know how. He froze a couple of barrels over and broke them over Shudder’s head, and that ... did it. Cooled him off. The Gist didn’t get out far enough to do any damage.”

Corrival sighed. “And now you’re wanting me to do clean-up.”

“Larrikin’s going to take Shudder and leave.”

“You make it sound like Shudder’s his kid.” Ah, now there was a hint of amusement. Erskine grinned, but the expression faded soon after.

“I figured Larrikin for someone who didn’t take anything seriously. Always wondered how he and Shudder became friends, but I was starting to think it was just that Shudder was fun to annoy.” Or maybe it had been a brother thing. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe Shudder had rescued Larrikin and felt a sense of responsibility. Larrikin wasn’t a bad soldier; the opposite. He was powerful. Erskine knew that. It was just that he’d never seen the man take anything truly seriously.

Until now.

“Corrival, if they leave, Meritorious’s little plan is going to fall apart before it gets going.” Because it would. Because it was all still too new, and new in the way that any one of them just up and leaving over something like this would cause the others not to bond. They might stick together, they might even be a squad, but they’d never be a team. Without that trust they wouldn’t survive for long as the group Meritorious meant them to be.

“I know.” Quiet, contemplative. Someone just outside the tent-flap cleared their throat and he raised his voice. “Come in.” As the healer entered Corrival turned back to Erskine. “I’ll deal with it. You’ll take my bunk tonight.”

“Flattering, but I’m pretty sure Vex’d get jealous,” Erskine quipped, and a moment later felt a soft cuff over his head.

“I’m too old for you, boy. Make sure he gets to bed okay.” The last was directed at the healer, and Corrival waited long enough to get a nod before reaching out to take up his coat and stride through the tent-flap.

 

One thing Rover liked was a good bed, and not the way Ravel and Vex did. He hadn’t had much in the way of good beds for ... well, most of his life, really. Travelling didn’t leave much room for good beds. He’d picked up a few things, though. Bits and pieces, things he could carry to make a bed more comfortable but wouldn’t get in the way. It wasn’t easy, because bedding? Got in the way a _lot_. That was why he liked heavy cloaks. Why he carried a self-fashioned satchel and not a woven bag. Why he had a separate soft-bag into which he stuffed his clothes. Why he had an actual honest-to-God pillow.

Anton wasn’t like that. He didn’t see the point in complaining. Sleep on a hard dirt floor, he would.

Which was why he and his soon-to-be-aching head had the softest part of the tent-floor. Cots were reserved for generals. It wasn’t exactly a nobleman’s mattress, but Rover’s bits and pieces were as soft as they could possibly be without actually having a mattress at all. The Gist-user was sprawled on that bed, face-down, his limbs askew in a way they usually weren’t. Anton curled up when he slept, frequently as if curled around something. Ten kids in a tiny hovel, and Anton the eldest son—how else would he sleep, but small and protective? In the orphanage, the point had been the opposite. The kids who went to bed first got the most space on the floor. Because of that Rover sprawled when he slept, always had.

Silently Rover packed up around the Gist-user, gathering up Anton’s things in his bags and leaving his own in a pile. He’d easily be able to wrap them up in the blanket once Anton stopped using it.

His back was turned toward the entrance when Rover heard a crunching footstep, and quick as a flare he snapped around, his hand lifting.

“Hold up,” came Deuce’s gruff voice, and Rover closed his fingers on a nudge of the air. The walls rippled with the backlash of the aborted shove. The general’s thickset figure stooped, pulling the flap aside, an illuminating flame in his palm that flickered across the crags in his face.

General Corrival Deuce. One of the most feared and most respected leaders in the war-effort. Said to be Meritorious’s closest confidant. Usually you wouldn’t expect a general to visit a man’s tent personally, but then again, Deuce had never been usual. That was what Rover liked about him. He was a general you could almost expect to visit a man’s tent personally.

Almost.

“What do you want?” Rover asked brusquely, his fingers tingling but the man respectful enough to at least lower his hand.

“I heard you might be leaving,” Deuce said equally brusquely, glancing around the tent. Rover had to give him credit; the glance wasn’t pointed. Just scanning.

“Figured we’d done enough for the war-effort,” Rover said with a shrug, turning around so Deuce couldn’t see the way he clenched his fist. “If you’re here to convince me otherwise, I’m not really interested.”

“Me? No. I came to sober up Shudder.”

Startled, Rover whirled around, but Deuce was already crouching by Anton, snuffing out his flame with a wave. Before Rover could object, the older Elemental had leaned in and was—wait. Deuce put his hands on Anton’s head, massaging his temples, through his hair, down to his neck and across his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Rover demanded, surprised enough that even in the face of the sheer business-like manner in which Deuce did it, he stepped forward, one hand reaching out to yank the man away.

“Did it ever occur to you, Larrikin, with all your apparent skills in water-manipulation which you neglected to mention, that the human body’s made of the same stuff?” Rover’s hand froze halfway to Deuce’s shoulder. The bastard didn’t even look up, but Rover wasn’t sure whether to be angry or grateful for that. “It’s an old trick I learned on the road. Filter the booze in the body using the water. It’s not exactly easy, but I figure a man who can turn water to ice, which I’ve never heard of before, mark you, should be able to manage the finesse it needs.”

Rover stood paralysed. Was he—did Deuce just imply what he thought he’d implied? He can’t have. Because it sounded like he was offering to teach Rover how to sober up a man using magic. Except ... Rover barked a laugh, rocking back on his heels. “Thought you said you weren’t here to talk me into staying.”

“I’m not,” Deuce replied, working down Anton’s back and stopping in the small of it. He straightened, flexing his fingers, and then shuffled to start with the man’s feet and work his way upwards. “If you want to go, then go.  But I figure Shudder ought to be able to decide where he goes before you drag him off God-knows-where because you’re scared.”

“I—what?” He should have felt angry. He should have felt angry, but he didn’t. Deuce’s right-hand man, or son, or whatever the Hell he was, had nearly cost three dozen men their lives because he and Vex had to go be _stupid_ , and here Deuce was, accusing him of cowardice. Rover should have been angry, but he was too bewildered to make it there.

“You think you’re the only one with trust issues around here, Larrikin?” Deuce straightened up and looked him in the eyes, and in the dimly-lit lantern, Rover could see the gleam of his eyes in his tired face. “Half the time Bespoke has people running away screaming when they see his face. Pleasant and Shudder’s own families turned them out when they started with the magic. Hopeless is a dead man the instant anyone on the other side finds out what he can do—to say nothing of half of ours. Vex’s brother was having his wife the whole time they were married.”

“And you and Ravel?” Rover asked without thinking. Something in the shadows around Deuce’s face indicated he was smiling, but Rover couldn’t tell what kind of smile it was.

“I’m a bastard in the literal sense of the word; my clan didn’t want a son who might make the claim to succession cloudy. Erskine was raised by his mama alone while all his neighbours told him his father had run off and left them both just because Erskine had the gall to be born. ”

Rover said nothing. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was meant to say. Part of him was still furious, because he was. He had the right to be. The thing was that Deuce wasn’t pretending he _didn’t_ , and somehow that fact made it harder to be at all.

“It’s not like it’s hard to figure out,” he said, but in a resigned sort of tone that said he was just reaching for reasons to still be angry.

“It’s not.” Deuce looked down at Anton, his eyes narrowed. “But Gist-users aren’t thick on the ground, and neither of you were exactly forthright with the warning signs when I gave you the chance.”

Of course they hadn’t. Because they hadn’t been a team yet. Who was going to share weaknesses with a group of men they didn’t trust? Deuce seemed to know what he was thinking, because he’d looked up again and this time Rover saw the amused grimness in the smile.

“So. Still gonna leave, Larrikin, or are you gonna give Shudder the chance to decide what he wants to do?”

Rover hesitated. He’d rarely stayed in one place for more than a half-decade in his life. Sticking by Anton was the nearest thing he’d had to settling down. But now that he was calmer, he found some of the thoughts from earlier filtering back in. Deuce’s litany helped. They really were similar, all of them, in some ways. Ways that counted.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Uh huh.” Deuce nodded and pushed himself to his feet with a groan and grumble. “If you’re still thinking about it in the morning, report to my tent by the time the sun clears the top of the forest. And tell Shudder not to piss too close to the torches. Worst part of the morning after sobering up quick, that.”

Rover winced, but before he could anything else—whether that would be thanks or a joke, Rover wasn’t sure—Corrival Deuce had strode out of the tent.

 

When the messenger had come around with the directive to hotfoot it to Corrival’s tent before the sun cleared the forest, Dexter had winced. Not only had he nearly been killed by a rampaging Gist, but he’d wound up lonely in his bed after all. Usually adrenaline worked for him, but this was adrenaline on top of ‘shit I screwed up so bad’, and that combination did the complete opposite.

He didn’t exactly drag his feet on the way, but Dexter was definitely less-than-enthused as he came to the tent-flap and hesitated.

“Get your arse in here, Vex,” Corrival growled, and with another wince Dexter pulled up the flap and ducked through the entrance, his fingers twitching as he resisted the urge to fiddle with his sleeve. Corrival, as far as he could tell, hadn’t even looked up from where he stood leaned over his desk, scribbling something too scrawled to read upside-down. This was curious because there was a chair just to the side.

Something else that was curious was that Dexter wasn’t the only one present. Erskine was there, which Dexter had expected, but he was asleep and sprawled on Corrival’s cot, which was; it was only after a moment that Dexter remembered, chagrined, the way Erskine had held his shoulder the night before.

Erskine wasn’t the only one, though. Hopeless was lurking in the corner over Corrival’s shoulder in a manner which indicated it was his instinctive position. Pleasant and Bespoke were also there, opposite the cot, Bespoke quietly behind the entrance where he’d be the last thing seen upon entering. There was no sign of Larrikin or Shudder.

Dexter hesitated. “Um—”

“Sit.” Corrival pointed at the chair with his stubby quill. Ducking his head, Dexter nodded and took the chair, not daring to refuse even though he didn’t deserve it. Then again, it put him even further below everyone else, so maybe that was the point.

“We’re waiting on Shudder and Larrikin, I assume?” Pleasant asked.

“You assume correctly,” Corrival answered, still not looking up from whatever missive he was writing. There was a stack of them, open and unopened (or at least folded), to either side of him. No one said anything else. They all knew why they were there, and they all doubted that either Larrikin or Shudder would show. Corrival seemed sure, though, so no one spoke or hardly moved. Dexter watched Erskine breathing, his face still pale and faintly lined with pain.

There came the sound of one pair of footsteps outside the tent, the flap rustled and a moment later Larrikin was standing in the doorway, his face not exactly blank. He looked around, but his gaze didn’t land on Dexter at all, as if the Elemental was still too angry to want to acknowledge his existence at all. It did catch for a moment on Erskine, though.

And still Corrival didn’t look up. “Where’s Shudder?”

“He wants to stay,” Larrikin said, crossing his arms but not moving, defiance in his stance. Defiance and something else, something like uncertainty. “He’ll even stick with the group. He just didn’t really want to see any of you right now.”

In other words, he was disobeying a direct order. Dexter turned to stare at Corrival, at a loss as to how the man might react to _that_ news. Corrival wasn’t like other generals, but it _was_ a direct order.

Corrival only nodded, signed the page with a flourish, folded it, sealed it, and finally looked up. “How is he?”

Larrikin, to Dexter’s everlasting amazement, actually grinned. It was a small grin, not much compared to his usual fare, but after the way he’d reacted last night it was the last thing Dexter expected to see. “Stone-cold sober. He even remembers most of last night. He couldn’t remember anything, last—”

He cut off abruptly and for a moment there was silence. Corrival nodded, straightening up, arms folding over his chest, feet planted wide in a stance that indicated he was ready to stand there for a while. Absently Dexter wished he hadn’t given him his chair. “What happened last time?”

Another tense silence. Then, finally, Larrikin shrugged. “Ever heard of the werewolf of Ballinasloe?”

Dexter had, but he didn’t dare say anything. Not that he could see what the relevance was; werewolves weren’t as common as they used to be, but they weren’t unknown.

“There aren’t any werewolves in Ballinasloe,” Erskine mumbled from the bed. Dexter jumped.

“There weren’t any then, either,” Larrikin with a slight edge in his voice. “Anton’s last living relative had just died and he decided it was a good time to start drinking away his woes. I didn’t know him from Jack, but he seemed like he needed cheering up, so I gave it a go. Next thing I know, his Gist is coming out and it’s all I can do to get him out the door before he hurts a mortal.” He laughed, a mixed laugh of grim irony and genuine amusement. “To be honest, if it hadn’t frosted hard the night before and left the riverbanks iced over, I’d probably be dead. As it is, we just took a dip in freezing cold water and that shook him out of it. He was out cold the rest of the day and the night, and didn’t remember anything when he woke up.”

It ... made sense. If Shudder really had lost control in a mortal tavern, it wasn’t like they would know the difference between a real werewolf and a man who must have looked an awful lot like one. Dexter kept his mouth shut.

“Okay.” Corrival turned suddenly to Hopeless. “Why didn’t you know this?”

From the surprised silence, shifting quickly to dawning realisation, no one else had thought of that either. Except maybe Pleasant. He seemed to think of everything, and it was hard to tell when he hadn’t. Hopeless himself looked startled, shifting at the sudden attention.

“I can’t read everything all at once,” he admitted. “The mind has a kind of filing system. Something like this comes under Shudder’s need to control his Gist. Until something happened to make it specifically relevant, I had no reason to see it as anything except—” He broke off, hesitating as if trying to find the words to explain.

“Except a single insignificant word in a block of text?” Corrival suggested dryly.

Hopeless mulled that over for a moment, and in spite of Corrival’s tone, he nodded wryly. “Something like that. People file things under headings. Most of the time that’s all I skim, unless I’m curious or something leaps out at me.” He smiled then, a small smile as they were beginning to learn was characteristic of him, but tight and grim as well. “Trying to read all that a person is all at once—I’ve tried that before, and it was ... overwhelming. To put it lightly. Trying the same when I’ve got three or four ‘files’ to read? Or more?”

He shook his head.

“You’re being very forthcoming,” Pleasant observed quietly.

“He was about to make it an order,” Hopeless said dryly.

“That I was,” Corrival said, and looked each one of them sternly in the face. “I said before that each of you are my men now. I said there would be no secrets. A team can’t be a real team unless each person knows what the others do. Strengths. Weaknesses. Now me, I’m a simple man. I’m an Elemental and not much more.”

Erskine snorted. Corrival clarified. “Not much more that’s _relevant_. I could give you my life’s story, but I don’t have to, I don’t plan to, and I don’t expect the same from you. But if there’s things you’re keeping which will affect your behaviour if they get nudged, which could kill you—or others—because we don’t know it, or which could _save_ you—or others—if we _did_ know it, now is the time to say.”

For several long moments there was dead silence. No one was looking around, but the tension in the air was so thick it made Dexter’s skin tingle. So heavy it put a stone in his gut, and he _had_ to break it somehow.

“Strawberries give me hives,” he blurted. The moment turned stunned and then, quite suddenly, Bespoke snorted and curled in slightly, his broad shoulders shaking. “What?” Dexter muttered defensively, but unable to keep his mouth from quirking. “They do. Hives, breathing problems, the whole thing. He said anything that could kill us.”

“Yes, I did,” Corrival agreed, straight-faced but with a suspicious twitch around his lips. Erskine had his face buried in the bedcovers, his back quivering. Hopeless, a hand over his mouth. When Dexter risked a glance toward Larrikin, however, he found the man with a tight jaw, starting ahead, fingers drumming on one arm. The feeling of relief evaporated with the cold, hard pit in his stomach, and he looked down, wishing he hadn’t said anything at all.

But his words had broken the tension, and now Pleasant tilted his head curiously. Or as curious as possible given he was a skeleton. “You conjured a shield last night. Is that what it usually looks like?”

“No,” Dexter answered reluctantly, his gaze flickering from Larrikin to Pleasant, down and then up again as he resisted the urge to hunch in his chair. “That was pretty pathetic. Conjuration is mostly a manipulation of energy, but I can usually make them solid enough to make them look pretty.” He was going to leave it at that, but then he glanced at Corrival and decided he didn’t have the stones to disobey an implied order like Shudder had a direct one.

He would, usually. Usually, he wouldn’t care about acting right for a commanding officer, since most of them were the type to plan and let the men on the field run into the problems with said plan. Corrival wasn’t like that. He was down here, in this muddy tent, with all the rest of them instead of sitting in a safehouse in Dublin like the other generals. Dexter didn’t want to disappoint him.

“The more I put into a shield, the more damage it can take before it collapses. So if I just want to, say, put a lid on a leaky barrel, I wouldn’t need much force in it. If I wanted to stop a flood, I’d need a whole lot more.”

“And your energy beam?” Skulduggery asked, his voice even. Dexter wished, abruptly, that the skeleton showed _some_ kind of emotion. He shrugged uncomfortably.

“Same principle, sort of. The beam’s an unstable conjuration. I don’t need a spear in my hand when I’ve got an Elemental throwing fire at me from fifty feet away. I do need something that’s fast and dangerous which I can still direct. So I conjure something halfway and let it be unstable all over whoever I want it to be unstable at.”

“So long as you don’t want it to be unstable all over _us_ ,” Erskine said, his voice muffled because his face was still covered.

“How _did_ you freeze those barrels?” Ghastly asked suddenly, staring at Larrikin, who looked startled to suddenly be in the spotlight all over again. Then he shrugged and gave the boxer a reckless grin.

“What can I say? I’m just naturally talented.”

“And someone else knowing that trick might be the difference between a skirmish and a massacre,” Corrival said flatly, and Larrikin’s grin fled. Corrival nodded toward Skulduggery. “Pleasant, you’ve got some skill with water from all I’ve heard, if those stories of you walking on it are true. Larrikin’ll show you how it’s done. And that _is_ an order—unless, of course, you still think you’ve done enough for the war-effort?”

This last was said dryly but not cruelly, questioning but unpointed toward Larrikin. The Elemental’s ears still went red. And yet he grinned, a long, slow smirk. “You still going to show off your tricks, old dog?”

“Don’t make me roll you, pup, and you might stand a chance,” Corrival retorted, but it seemed as if some of the tension had left his back, and with a jolt Dexter realised that the general hadn’t really known whether Larrikin or Shudder would show up or not. Somehow that thought wasn’t comforting. There had been a lot of uncomfortable things happening lately, things which made Dexter realise how comfortable he was getting with the situation of the war.

 _That_ was discomforting.

“What’s this?” Skulduggery asked. “I think we should demand full disclosure.”

“Old Elemental sobering trick,” Corrival said blandly. “Which I’m not teaching the rest of you, because I’m not about to encourage more drinking than you already do. This is for emergency use only, Larrikin, am I clear?”

“Sir, yessir!” Larrikin saluted, snapping it up high and perfect and utterly mocking.

Corrival rolled his eyes. “Anyone else have any deep, dark secrets they have to offer?” There was a long moment of silence in which no one spoke, not even Larrikin; his smile, still worn, was sardonic. “No? Fine. Anyone comes up with something, you know where my tent is. For now: out.” He gestured at the tent-flap with his quill. “I have paperwork to do.”

He didn’t look too happy about it, either, but was resigned to the inevitable, judging by the way he was glancing down at his desk. Larrikin turned and left without a word, but hesitated at the flap before he did.

“Another time, General,” Bespoke said with a respectful nod as Skulduggery followed Larrikin, turning to exit himself. Hopeless nodded as well, but silently, as he passed by. Dexter shifted in his chair, watching them leave and then glancing at Erskine. He’d hardly moved, except to put his head in a better position for breathing, his eyes shut.

“Something you wanted, Vex?” Corrival asked without looking up.

“It was my idea,” Dexter blurted out.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Dex,” Erskine murmured. “I was just as involved as you were.”

“I know more about Adept disciplines,” Dexter retorted. “I should’ve known there’d be backlash. Even Elementals have an equivalent exchange when they’re futzing with magic, but Adepts usually have to give something explicit up to get something.”

“That’s a law of magic all over,” Corrival pointed out, lifting his eyebrows and looking at Dexter from under his brow. “We all know Shudder had to give something up to get his Gist.”

“He’s always so controlled,” Dexter said, looking down at the dirt floor. “It’s not like it’s hard to figure out booze is bad for someone who needs to be controlled.”

“None of us figured it out, Dex,” Erskine said, with an odd note of gentleness in his tone. That tone ... it simultaneously made Dexter want to laugh off that there was anything wrong and crawl into bed with Erskine like he had with his brother when they were kids. Dexter was the youngest of the group; he knew that. He was a good century younger than the rest at least—even more, when it came to Corrival. Right now, he was feeling it keenly, because as much fun as Erskine was, he was also Corrival’s right-hand man. Larrikin wasn’t. Dexter liked him, a lot, and now he’d broken Larrikin’s trust because of a stupid prank.

“I know,” he whispered miserably.

“If you want to fix it, then fix it, Vex,” Corrival said simply, shaking open a page and laying it flat on the desk to read it. Dexter opened his mouth and then closed it again, because although his first urge was to ask, sarcastically, how he was meant to do that, Corrival’s tone was so matter-of-fact that it was impossible to be mad. Not that Dexter was actually mad at Corrival anyway, or should be mad at a general, or _wanted_ to be mad at _this_ general, and he really should just go and figure something out before Corrival got tired of him overstaying his welcome and booted him through the exit.

Dexter took a deep breath and rose, nodding. “I guess I’ll do that, then. Gentlemen.”

He summoned a self-sardonic smile, sketched a quick bow, and left, already turning over in his head how he could possibly fix what he’d broken.

_~ finis_


	3. Rueful days (part one)

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Anton had known Ravel was there. It was difficult to miss him, given the man had been standing there and watching him for at least ten minutes. Anton wasn’t sure whether he’d been waiting for Anton to acknowledge him or just working up the nerve to talk, but either way, the silence was finally broken.

Still Anton didn’t look over. Didn’t even look up, or react. He just dug his spade into the muddy earth, turned it, cast the debris onto the pile by the side. Unlike most of the others in the camp, he enjoyed physical labour. He wasn’t an Elemental to begin with, and so didn’t feel he was entitled to that power over earth which they were denied.

And working meant not thinking. Working made it easier to keep that boil of heat in his chest down to a low simmer.

Working meant he didn’t have to remember how close he’d gotten because two of his new squadmates were fools. Dexter Vex was young; Anton actually felt very little anger toward him, although that would probably have been different if he hadn’t been able to remember the night. It was Ravel he had more of a problem with.

He wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or relieved that Ravel didn’t seem to require a response.

“It was stupid. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t heard a whole lot of stories about ... well, your. Um. Skill-set. We just ... weren’t taking them seriously. Or, well, not seriously enough.”

Anton gave him nothing. Dirt crunched. Pebbles tinkled against steel. Muscles strained.

Ravel said nothing either, and Anton started to believe that maybe he’d left. Right up until a pair of feet hit the dirt of the trench beside him and a new, washed spade dug into the ground. Startled, Anton’s head jerked up to find Erskine Ravel in the hole, his sleeves rolled back and painstakingly tailored clothes already muddy at the hems.

The Elemental didn’t look up at Anton’s awaited acknowledgement, and a moment later Anton turned his own head back down. He didn’t say anything, but his Gist subsided into nothing more than a curled-up warmth.

 

The problem with having messed up in a major way was that it was hard to say whether or not things could be fixed. Or how to do it. Dexter would not have pegged Rover Larrikin as someone who held a grudge, and yet, here Dexter was being utterly ignored. They weren’t at _The Happy Leprechaun_ , mostly because Dexter had been banned and Rover was just obviously disinclined to go back. Dexter hadn’t even meant to meet the Elemental at this other pub, whose name Dexter hadn’t bothered to remember; it had just happened.

Now they were sitting there, in the most awkward silence imaginable, because Dexter had been stupid enough to sit down instead of moving on.

“So we’ve been having some nice weather lately,” said the Adept, and in lieu of wincing at the awful start he plunged onward. “I’m starting to think it’s a trap somehow. Lure us off-guard, and then strike. The real question is, how’re they doing it? Is it an Adept thing, or an Elemental thing? I mean, Elementals can control the _elements_ , and the weather is practically _made_ of elements, so does that mean Elementals can control the weather?”

Larrikin lifted his glass to take a mouthful of whiskey and set it down with a clunk without acknowledging Dexter’s words at all. Dexter went on, if only for the sake of making some noise. “Then again, Elementals can’t control more than one element at a time, can they, so it can’t be just one doing it. You’d need at least three, and it’s probably something that takes a lot of experimenting and, you know, _team-work_. Let’s face it, the bad guys just aren’t that good at working together. Sure, for things like slaughtering a few hundred people, but not for something _delicate_. It’s probably an Adept, and a discipline like that has got to be either useless or pretty awesome.”

Dexter paused, backtracking the conversation in his head and grimacing. “Which goes without saying, really, but think about it. A farmer would love magic like that, but an army? You could drop a blizzard on your enemy, sure, but then you’d probably be dropping it on yourself too, and what’s the point in that? I mean—”

“Rover, Dex.” Hopeless appeared behind them with such suddenness that Dexter jumped. Then he smiled, just a little too relieved, and slapped the counter beside him.

“Descry! Come join us!”

Hopeless shook his head, giving Dexter one of his small, grim smiles. “Corrival will want us in his office soon.”

That was kind of the creepy thing about Hopeless. Half the time it wasn’t ‘ _wants_ us in his office’, but ‘ _will want_ ’. Dexter often saw him playing chess with the camp guards or with someone nearby the general-in-residence’s tent, probably so he could skim the minds of the scouts coming in. Which meant that half the time, they were already _at_ Corrival’s tent by the time the man knew he wanted them.

The first time Descry had assembled them Dexter had actually seen Corrival look nonplussed. The last time, Dexter had heard him mumble, “I could get used to this.”

“Oh,” Dexter said, “and here I’d just put in for holiday-time. A little soiree in France, a little wander through Bulgaria—”

Descry gave him a tiny amused grin, but Rover’s mug hit counter and the man rose, face set, and strode out. Dexter watched him, and then put his head on the counter with a thud and a groan. And then an “Ow.”

_Was_ all this too broken to be fixed? he wondered. He’d been trying for _days_ now. They’d had one minor mission and it had been awful. Oh, they’d succeeded in it, but the jokes had been forced, the camaraderie gone. They’d been fast, efficient, and utterly cold.

“It isn’t,” Hopeless said, and Dexter startled, his head shooting up. He blinked wordlessly at the redhead as the man slipped into Larrikin’s vacant chair without even looking around him to see it anyone was listening. Of course, he wouldn’t need to, would he?

The mind-reader’s words sank in at last and Dexter shook his head. He was about to ask “How do you know?” and then stopped. Who else could know better? It took a moment for _that_ to sink in too. Hopeless was a mind-reader, and he said it wasn’t too late. That meant it wasn’t.

Something tightened in Dexter’s chest, and he thought of a better question. “How can _I_ know?”

Descry smiled at him then, and it was an oddly dimpled smile edged with mischief, accompanied by a twinkle in his eyes. “He sat there and listened to you prattle on, didn’t he?”

He rose and clapped a hand to Dexter’s shoulder, and Dexter couldn’t even really respond; he was too stunned. Because Hopeless was right. A dawning grin spread slowly over Dexter’s face. Hopeless _was_ right. Dexter didn’t have to sit down with Larrikin ... but Larrikin didn’t have to sit there and take it, either.

Suddenly in the mood to whistle a jaunty tune, Dexter downed the last of his drink and rose to amble after the others.

 

With one last heave of damp earth, Anton dug the edge of his spade into the dirt and surveyed the new cesspit with satisfaction. It wasn’t as deep as a real pit, but it was deep enough for their purposes. Their camps didn’t usually stay in one place long enough to need more than two. Ravel stood by his side, panting and wiping his forehead, leaving a muddy smear. “Good God, that’s hard work,” he groaned, and all but flopped against the side of the trench, lifting his fingers. “I think I have blisters on my blisters.”

“Merchant’s son,” Anton taunted, utterly deadpan, and Ravel’s head shot up, startle all over his face. Anton grinned at him, and Erskine laughed.

“Peasant,” he shot back, climbing out of the hole with a stifled groan.

“Backbone of society,” Anton corrected, vaulting out with a much greater ease that had Erskine eyeing him jealously.

“Wage-payers,” retorted the Elemental, jerking a thumb back at himself. Societal contracts thus firmly established, Anton took Erskine’s spade while Erskine, brushing dirt off his clothes, went to rope some other sorcerers into helping them building a small privy. Some men were already eyeing them, in fact; when the usual labourers had shown up just after daylight and seen Anton there, toiling grimly away in silence, they hadn’t dared interfere. Now they approached cautiously but hopefully—or in most’s cases, resignedly—to lend a hand.

When he returned Anton lifted an eyebrow at the number of men Erskine had actually roped into ‘helping’. There would be nothing left for them to do. The Gist-user found himself vaguely disappointed for that fact. “Worried I’d invite you to join me?”

“Wouldn’t want to make anyone jealous by having you all to myself,” Erskine said innocently, and then shrugged. “Corrival’s gonna want to see us soon. Or maybe he already does. Either way, we should head on over.”

Before Erskine had even finished speaking, a fission had run through Anton. He straightened up, the deadpan tease vanishing from his eyes and around his mouth. He nodded without argument, sparing just long enough to wash his hands under a barrel-tap. Erskine, already as freshened up as he could be given he’d been slaving in a pit for the last few hours, fell into step beside him. There was a moment’s pause, and then he asked suddenly, “Has Dex apologised yet?”

_When Anton’s tent-flap shifted, the only person he’d expected to be responsible was Larrikin. After all, Anton hadn’t even_ gone _to the debriefing, or whatever it was Deuce had called. He’d meant it when he said he wanted to stay; it wasn’t even just about the war-effort, either. Yes, Anton wanted to fight, and the best place to do that was here. But, more to the point, the best place to do that was with_ these men _. He preferred not to see them yet, preferred to wait until his anger subsided, but Anton had been bitterly disappointed by life before. He wasn’t the sort to run from that disappointment._

_Either way, he had relayed his wishes through Larrikin, so the last voice Anton expected to hear was Vex’s. “Anton?”_

_Startled enough to spin around from where he was crouched to sort through the pile of his and Larrikin’s things, Anton managed to withhold any other reaction at the sight of the other Adept. Vex stepped back, palms out in what would have been a pacifying gesture for anyone else but, for Vex, could have been offensive as easily as it was defensive. The sight had the dual effect of making Anton’s Gist seethe and gut tighten._

_Dexter spoke quickly, as if to say his piece as quickly as possible before Anton tossed him out. “I’m sorry. That’s all I wanted to say. Larrikin told us you didn’t want company, and that’s okay. I just didn’t think this should wait.”_

_Anton exhaled slowly and then leashed his Gist just a little tighter, like yanking a saddle-strap taut just as the horse breathed out. The fact was, he wasn’t as angry at Dexter as he was at Ravel, and he knew why. “Alright.”_

_Vex’s mouth opened, and then the words registered a moment later, making his eyes widen and mouth snap shut without having made a sound. “What?”_

_The look was so like something one of his brothers used to wear that Anton smiled slightly. “I said alright.”_

_“Just like that?” Vex looked gobsmacked. “Larrikin looked like he was ready to hold a grudge for the next thousand years, and you just say ‘alright’?”_

_Anton turned away and knelt again. “Rover has his own reasons for being angry.”_

_“Then why aren’t you?”_

_Anton glanced over his shoulder. Dexter looked genuinely disconcerted, genuinely shocked. Somehow Anton thought the boy might accept just being dismissed, except that his stun indicated it was something he was used to. Anton had always tried hard not to dismiss his siblings. It wasn’t how one treated one’s younger brothers and sisters. Or elder ones either, for that matter. He turned back to his bags, sorting through them, and though his voice was low it was clear and even._

_“Because I remember the look in your eyes when you realised you were standing between me and everyone else, and I remember that in spite of that, you stood your ground.”_

_There was a heartbeat’s worth of silence. Then, “That’s it?”_

That’s it?! _Anton turned sharply, not exactly in anger but in surprise. Dexter still flinched. “You’ve seen my Gist, Vex,” Anton said almost incredulously. “You don’t consider standing your ground against it to be worth remembering?”_

_“Well, no, I ...” The boy was floundering, and badly. Anton frowned. This wasn’t an act of false modesty; Vex was genuinely surprised that his actions might be enough to be worth instant forgiveness. “It was my fault you were about to lose control in the first place. Half my fault, anyway.”_

_“And?” Anton asked, blanking his face so Dexter couldn’t see his consideration. Dexter shrugged._

_“And some would say that if you’d torn me apart I’d have deserved it.”_

Who? _Anton wanted to ask._ Who would say that?

_He could think of some names, but it was clear Dexter was thinking of someone specific—or held the belief_ because _of someone specific. Dexter Vex wasn’t a child. He didn’t need coddling. Yet he had a youth and earnest need for the respect and regard for his elders that reminded Anton painfully of his youngest brother._

_Anton rubbed his head with a sigh. “You were foolish and thoughtless and_ young _,” he said. Dexter winced. “If my Gist had been released it would have been everyone who suffered. My anger is on their behalf. By standing where you did and staying there, you proved that they were your main concern too. That’s all I need to know to trust that you won’t be so stupid again.”_

_The Gist-user returned to sorting, setting aside a pile of Rover’s things which the Elemental had dumped on Anton’s own the night before. He still felt Dexter’s bewildered gaze on his back. Finally the young sorcerer said in a tentatively relieved voice, “You’re not angry?”_

_At which point, of course, Anton had been obliged to throw a shoe at him and then make him go and bring it back when it flew through the tent-flaps._

“He has,” Anton said with a nod, and cracked a smile. “He seemed to think it was too important to put off; he showed up at my tent after I sent Rover to Corrival alone.”

“He did what?” Erskine snorted and then laughed, and shook his head. “I remember being that young. Maybe he’ll keep us all so.”

“I was under the impression you never grew up,” Anton replied. Erskine just grinned.

“Oh, good. That means my pretence is still holding strong.”

“Was there any doubt?”

“No, not really.” Erskine shrugged as they approached Deuce’s tent, pausing at the entrance and then bowing theatrically. “After you, good sir.”

“Thank you, merchant’s son.”

“You’re welcome, peasant.”

Anton ducked first through the tent-flap to find the rest of the group already present and most of them looking at them with a mixture of amusement, exasperation, and faint incredulity.

“Busy, lads?” Deuce asked dryly.

“You should be thanking me,” Erskine told him, moving past Anton to flop unceremoniously on the general’s cot. Anton chose to be less undignified and irreverent and simply took up station beside Larrikin. “I just finished digging out your new cesspit. By hand! Look at my clothes!”

He shook out the front of his tunic, mockingly aggrieved. Ghastly tilted his head. “I’ll make you a deal, Ravel. I’ll tailor you some clothes actually worth being worried about, if you let me burn your whole wardrobe.”

“You tailors,” Erskine grumbled. “You have no sense of fashion.”

Which probably wasn’t the wisest thing to joke, because Ghastly’s face shifted into an expression which indicated he was preparing for a ranting, when Corrival had the foresight to cut in.

“Seeing as Ravel and Shudder decided to break Hopeless’s streak of premonitions, let’s not dally, shall we, gentlemen? You may have guessed, but you’re needed.”

“Aren’t we always?” Dexter asked. He had, Anton noticed, regained a measure of his good humour, though a glance at stony-faced Larrikin told Anton it wasn’t due to forgiveness. “Men of stature and handsomeness are needed everywhere, I’m sure, but there’s only so many of us and so many places we can be, after all.”

“Someone throw a shoe at Vex,” Corrival said without looking up from his map. Barely a moment later, too quick for it to be anyone but Hopeless, one of Corrival’s unused boots sailed past and struck Dexter on the shoulder before tumbling to the ground.

“Ow.” Dexter rubbed his shoulder, throwing a betrayed look at Hopeless. “I thought you were my friend, Descry. For shame.”

“Just obeying my general’s orders,” Hopeless said blandly, but with a smile lurking around his eyes.

“You’re a cheater, that’s what you are,” Dexter shot back. “Just a big cheater trying to get in our leader’s good books.”

“ _Trying_?” Hopeless asked, raising his eyebrows pointedly. “I don’t think I have to _try_ anything.”

“I agree with Vex,” said Skulduggery. “You’re cheating. It hardly gives the rest of us a chance to suck up.”

“I didn’t realise there was a rulebook for snivelling to a higher-up,” Ghastly mused. “I think I’ve missed out on some valuable insights here.”

“The first man who snivels to me gets a personal boot up the arse,” Corrival told him, and added just as Erskine opened his mouth, “and the next man to talk without permission, other than me, gets his mouth washed out with soap. Unless it’s to confirm whether I’m bluffing or not, in which case, Ravel and Hopeless, go right ahead.”

Hopeless had a hand over his eyes, his shoulders quivering and mouth a straight line. Ravel grimaced. “He’s not bluffing,” he said to the rest of them. “Really not bluffing.”

Larrikin, Anton saw abruptly, may have been staring right ahead, but he had an odd, tiny lopsided smile edging one corner of his mouth. In fact, the Gist-user noticed with a glance, he was staring just to the side of Hopeless. For a moment Anton debated calling him out on it in front of everyone, but then opted to nudge Larrikin hard, but discreetly, in the ribs. The Elemental broke off his stare to look at Anton, and there was a definite smirk around his eyes and mouth. Hopeless caught his breath and straightened up. No one except possibly Pleasant noticed he’d been having trouble.

“It’s about Bliss,” Corrival said, apparently deciding the best way to move on was to ... well, move on. Even still, the news made every man straighten and focus on him with anticipation to such a degree that Corrival actually stopped to survey them all with a lifted eyebrow, and then turn to Hopeless. “You didn’t tell them?”

“I didn’t want to ruin the surprise,” said Hopeless with one of his tiny, secretive smiles.

“Word is that you brought this to Meritorious first.”

“Only a rumour.”

“Uh huh. Now it’s a lot more than a rumour.” Corrival turned back to the rest of them. “We’ve got word that Bliss has defected from Mevolent’s side and the Church of the Faceless Ones entirely.”

The dead silence was so stunned they probably could have heard Pleasant’s bones creak. “Are you serious?” Erskine demanded after a moment, swinging his legs off the cot to actually sit up properly. “ _Bliss_? He’s switching sides?”

“One of our men in Marseilles says Bliss walked into a tavern off the street and told a room full of sorcerers that if rats knew what was good for them, they’d leave a sinking ship now instead of later.” Corrival looked each of them in the eye one by one. “Six hours later they got visuals of Baron Vengeous in the area. The tavern our people were hiding in was one of the places hit.”

“He’s not just posturing,” Hopeless said in the cadence of someone answering a question asked. Anton frowned. He’d have preferred to be able to ask said question before it was answered. “Bliss doesn’t posture. He sees no reason to, and he’s not wrong. If he warned off our people he did it for a reason.”

“Which is your mission, gentlemen.” Corrival picked up the thread without missing a beat. “Even if Bliss is no longer working for Mevolent, that doesn’t mean he’s working for us. We need more information, not just about Bliss but his sister as well. They’re family; maybe they share changing views too.”

“Have you met either of them before?” Skulduggery asked Hopeless.

“That depends on your definition of ‘met’,” Hopeless admitted with a slight shrug. “I’ve met China, once, but I’ve seen her from a distance more. I haven’t spoken to Bliss directly at all, but I ... know him.” Something flickered on his face, something too quick for Anton to define, but either way the mind-reader’s implication was clear. He’d gotten close enough to Bliss to get a literal read on him. Which was probably the ‘rumour’ to which he was referring earlier—nothing more or less than a sense of Bliss’s basic motivations.

“Eachan and I aren’t expecting you to find Bliss or China quickly,” Corrival told them. “This is probably something that will take a while, so consider it ongoing. For the moment, we need someone to go into Marseilles and get as many details as possible. That’s you.”

“Sir!” Dexter’s hand shot up in an imitation of Larrikin at the group’s very first meeting. “Can we just tie steaks to our legs and walk into a lion’s den instead? It would probably be less painful.”

“There’s no lions in Ireland,” Skulduggery pointed out, “unless you want us to find you a carnival. Otherwise we could always put you in a dress and throw you into a brothel instead. I’ve done that before.”

There was a moment’s pause as everyone stared at him. Everyone except Ghastly, who was shaking his head with a rueful grin, and Hopeless, who once more had a hand over his eyes and a tautness to his mouth which indicated he was getting a few too many distracting thoughts from various people.

“You’ve put on a dress and walked into a brothel?” Dexter asked uncertainly, half as if he didn’t want to know.

“Of course not.” Skulduggery tilted his head. “I put someone _else_ in a dress and tossed him into a brothel. He didn’t seem to consider the fact that he made a very pretty young woman to be adequate compensation for my doing so, either.”

“He was sixteen,” Ghastly said. “No sixteen-year-old likes being told they’re a pretty girl.”

“Was he? He looked younger. He’s lucky I gave him the disguise of femininity at all.”

“I’m still trying to figure out why he let you put him in a dress a second time,” Ghastly mumbled.

“You’d better stop thinking about it,” Erskine told him, pointing into the corner over Corrival’s shoulder with a grin, “or Hopeless is going to fall down dead at any moment.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Skulduggery denied, lifting a finger. “He can’t read _my_ mind.”

Ravel wasn’t wrong, though, Anton saw with a quick smirk. Hopeless was leaning on the pole at the corner of the tent, taking deep, slow breaths as if they would help him get control of Ghastly’s factual thoughts and everyone else’s imaginings. Anton wasn’t thinking much of anything, but knowing Larrikin, Vex and Ravel, it was a wonder the man was still upright.

“You people are going to be the death of me,” Hopeless muttered.

“You should be thanking us,” Skulduggery pointed out. “We’ve giving you valuable experience in control before we walk head-first into enemy territory.”

Hopeless lowered his hand and, to Anton’s surprise, his face was entirely impassive except for the suspicious gleam in his eyes. “I’ll make sure to kick your skull over the border first, then.”

“Now you’re just being cruel to the dead.”

“If I find out any of you have been captured, tortured or murdered because of your idiocy, you’ll _all_ be dead men,” Corrival growled. It was a very convincing growl, except for the too-straight line his lips were making—the sort which denied a smile.

“Is that your final word on the subject, sir?” Erskine asked with an absolutely straight face.

“No, it isn’t. This is. Get out.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Dexter snapped a sharp salute and marched out of the tent. With languid gracefulness Skulduggery unfolded himself from his corner, nodding toward Corrival before he left. Chuckling slightly to himself, Ghastly followed. Erskine, still picking at his clothes, made a face, bounced to his feet, and wandered after them, Hopeless two steps behind. Silently Larrikin followed, as straight-faced as he’d been the last few days but with less tension in his shoulders than there had been.

Anton was the last out. As he passed through the flaps he glanced over his shoulder, and happened to catch a glimpse of Corrival Deuce leaning palms flat on his desk and laughing. 

 

It was late enough in the day that the group wouldn’t get far if they left right away, but they decided to leave anyway. They had enough daylight to reach Dublin, and once there they might be able to chase down a Teleporter rumoured to be in the area. Within half an hour, the band of sorcerers had assembled near the edge of the camp.

Most of them.

“Where the Hell is Vex?” Erskine complained, peering back in through the tents. “If he’s not quick we won’t even make it to Dublin before nightfall. Hopeless?”

Hopeless shrugged without opening his eyes from where he stood leaning against a tree, arms folded. “He had something turning over in his mind, but he left too quickly for me to pick what it was. He’ll—” He broke off suddenly, an odd expression crossing his face. It was sort of a mix of astonishment, understanding and deep, deep amusement. Ghastly wondered what it meant, and whether it meant Vex would be here soon, and was about to ask what was wrong when the mind-reader finished. “He’ll be here. Just … wait.”

Grumbling under his breath, Ravel folded his arms and slouched back onto his small travel-bag. “If he’s not here soon it’s his head you can punt over the border first.”

Then there was quiet, aside from the not-all-that-distant sounds of the camp. Erskine kicked pebbles away, a frown on his face. Hopeless remained where he was, an odd tiny smirk on the corner of his mouth. Larrikin stood nearest the path into the woods, fingers drumming along the strap binding his satchel while watching the trees; Shudder sat on a wood-pile nearby him. Skulduggery was a silent unmoving presence about a foot away, staring into space the way only a skeleton could.

From his place just under the trees, Ghastly looked at them all and wished that Vex wasn’t such an idiot. The fact was that Ghastly _liked_ these men. More to the point, he liked _working_ with these men. True, their individual reactions on seeing him had been about what he’d come to expect, for the most part. True, Vex still occasionally double-took, Ravel’s gaze sometimes slid away as if he wasn’t sure whether to look him in the eyes, and Hopeless had a habit of _staring_ which Ghastly was decently sure wasn’t all because of his mind-reading. (It was something in the tilt of his head. When Hopeless was eavesdropping he tended to cock his head as if listening to something no one else could hear.) But Larrikin … Larrikin had broken that tension in a way Ghastly hadn’t quite known was possible. In spite of the rest of it, the group at large had accepted him nearly instantaneously. Those first two missions, dare Ghastly say it, had actually been fun.

Until Vex and Ravel had ruined it. Until Larrikin decided to hold a grudge. Now Vex was making things worse by being idiotically tardy for a mission of this importance. Ghastly shifted restlessly, decided enough was enough, and dropped his arms to step out from under his tree.

“I’m going out to find him,” he said to the others, turning back toward the tents to do just that before Hopeless spoke.

“Wait.”

Ghastly paused and threw a glance over his shoulder at the man, but Hopeless hadn’t moved and made no sign he was going to speak again. When Ghastly turned back around, intending to go on anyway, he found himself stepping into a whirlwind of colourful movement.

“Well, chaps, if we’re all done dilly-dallying, shall we be off? People to see, places to go, you know how it is, lads. Chop-chop, tally-ho!”

Ghastly blinked as the slender man with the badly coiffed hair bustled past him at a brisk pace more suited to a tax collector leaving a house he’d just visited. His clothes were such a mishmash of colours and ridiculous flared or lacy styles that Ghastly double-took and then stared, incredulous. This was … this was a travesty of fashion, this was. He was so shocked that the man’s voice only dimly registered: nasal and grinding, English-accented to a ridiculous degree, and vaguely familiar.

“Dex?” Erskine blurted out, stunned, just before the figure vanished down the path into the trees.

“I _beg_ your pardon, good sir!” The figure whirled around and without missing a step came back toward them at the very same pace, finger raised and indignation written all over his powdered face. He was practically quivering. “I am _hardly_ even _remotely_ on the same level as that young egregious upstart! He is a _mockery_ to good men of stature and graciousness _everywhere_! I will thank you not to compare me to that rascal, if you please! Now, let’s do be off before we start gathering weeds!”

With that he whirled around again and _tottered_ —there was no other word for it—off on his absurdly high-heeled and buckled shoes. For a long moment there was absolute stunned silence as each man stared after him, all of them, for once, at a loss for words. The look of dazed bafflement on Ravel’s face would have been amusing, if Ghastly wasn’t feeling equally gobsmacked. Even Skulduggery had an air of bafflement.

Everyone except Hopeless, who calmly reached down to pick up his bag and sling it over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Hopeless,” Shudder said, and for once the man sounded as baffled as anyone else, “what just happened?”

Hopeless grinned suddenly, a small but intense grin which made his eyes twinkle with laughter. “If I told you that, it would spoil the surprise.”

So saying, he strode off down the path, actually whistling something light and jaunty. There was a beat as the rest of them stared after him too. “Is it something contagious?” Erskine wondered suddenly and half seriously. “Do we want to risk following?”

Quite suddenly Ghastly was taken by mischief. He even felt a grin break across his face. This was more like it. This was more like it, because for the first time in two weeks, Ghastly had seen Larrikin’s stony expression crack.

“I’m feeling like daring Deuce if you are,” he said cheerfully, returning to his bag to haul it up onto his shoulder. “And not the one sitting at his desk in the middle of camp, either. At least when we walk into the lion’s den they won’t know what to make of him.”

“They’ll probably choke on the wig and all the powder,” Erskine mumbled, still a little wide-eyed, but the rest of the group was moving now, following Ghastly into the trees, and the Elemental had to hurry to catch up.

Either Vex—or whoever he was—had stopped to wait for them or the length of those ridiculous heels kept him from moving as fast as it seemed he could through the undergrowth, because it didn’t take long before the group caught up with him. They heard him first, really, talking a mile a minute, and loudly, about bees.

“Obviously, there are _many differences_ between the regional forms of honey,” he was saying. “It’s all about the pollen, of course. The flowers blooming in any given area are what give honey their _lustre_ and _taste_ , so naturally, ensuring that the bees only have access to _certain_ flowers is paramount in maintaining the consistency of—”

“Since when does Vex know so much about bees?” Shudder asked quietly from somewhere over Ghastly’s shoulder.

“Are we sure it really _is_ Vex?” Erskine demanded. “I’m thinking it’s a changeling of some kind. Or just a really pushy and effeminate idiot with a God complex.”

“Hopeless hasn’t objected in the least,” Skulduggery observed clinically. “Height, weight and general physical build all match Vex as well.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a killjoy, Skulduggery?”

“Yes. Just now. Thank you for your feedback, Erskine, I will be sure to take it under due consideration.”

“There is one way to find out.” Startled by the voice at his shoulder, Ghastly jerked his head to find Larrikin speeding up and gaining ground on the pair in front of them. Well, the fast-moving blur of ridiculous colour and his silently-shaking redheaded shadow. There was a set intensity of purpose on his face which gave Ghastly pause. Larrikin wasn’t going to do something rash, was he?

Something rash that would stall the mission, Ghastly mentally amended a second later.

“—because of _course_ , the pollen one makes _available_ to one’s bees determines precisely its taste and texture, and naturally, one doesn’t want to misuse them! Most _laymen_ don’t realise this, but it’s only _logical_ that honey has its times and uses just as a fine wine might! Ergo—”

“Oh, that’s good,” Larrikin interrupted, and Ghastly wondered if the-man-who-was-not-Vex’s step faltered. “Maybe you can tell me which honey to use next time I need a snack while I’m entertaining a pretty woman.”

That was most _definitely_ a hitch in the-man-who-was-not-Vex’s step this time, and his back stiffened. “I mean,” Larrikin continued on blithely, oblivious to the fact that Hopeless had dropped back and was all but stuffing his sleeve in his mouth. “I suppose it depends on the woman, too, wouldn’t it? Which honey you’d use? If you wouldn’t drink red wine with poultry, would you eat, say, honey from Fermanagh off a Moorish woman?”

Ghastly choked, and behind him he heard Erskine’s snicker and the long snort Shudder made when he was trying to cover laughter with disdain. Skulduggery reached out and quickly yanked Hopeless back onto the path before he ran into a tree.

“I’d think a good dark honey would go best with Moors, myself, but then again they can be somewhat earthy so maybe a contrasting light honey would be better ...”

“Ex _cuse_ me, sir!” Ghastly winced as the-man-who-was-not-Vex’s voice hit a definite shrill note while he whirled around again. How, Ghastly wondered, was he not falling over every time he did that? Or at least not snapping the heels off his shoes?

It took a moment, under the shadow of the trees, for Ghastly to realise that the-man-who-was-not-Vex’s face was literally puce. _Puce_. How had he managed that?

He was also breathing like an ox about to charge, almost vibrating with indignation. “How _dare_ you violate the _sanctity_ of a profession as _ancient_ and _lucrative_ as bee-keeping with something as _base_ as your _carnal appetites_ and—”

Larrikin folded his arms, raised an eyebrow and drawled, “I’ll give you points for control, Vex, but how long do you think you’ll be able to keep this up, _really_?”

Breathing hard, the-man-who-was-not-Vex ground out through gritted teeth, “My-name-is-not-Vex!”

“Are you sure?” Ghastly asked, now coming level with the pair, guiding a quivering Hopeless by one arm. “Because you definitely look Vexed.”

“You’re not helping,” Hopeless whispered. Ghastly grinned at him.

“My name is _Rue_ ,” shouted the-man-who-was-not-Vex, and flounced off down the path before them, almost knocking Ghastly and Hopeless into the trees.

“ _I’m_ definitely rueing today,” Larrikin muttered, falling into step beside Shudder.

“It’s your own fault for prodding the madman,” Skulduggery told him.

“Are we sure that’s not some crazy faery changeling?” Erskine asked almost wistfully.

“Do you need it to be, to liven up your days?” Shudder returned dryly. Erskine batted his eyelashes at him.

“Only if you’re not there, Tall Dark Peasant, Sah.”

“Don’t make me take you out to the woodshed, Merchant’s Brat.”

“Is that a promise?”

Ghastly smiled to himself, still guiding Hopeless by the elbow until the mind-reader was less overwhelmed, and let the ridiculous banter wash over him. Vex’s pretence might not be wise for the sake of the mission, but it had already broken the stony silence which had enveloped the previous one, and so much the better.

“Just you wait, Ghastly Bespoke,” Descry murmured by his side, looking ahead with a small, fierce grin. “Just you wait.” 

 

In the end it took nearly three days to reach Marseilles. They reached Dublin just on nightfall, and even though they _found_ a Teleporter, _containing_ him was just a little bit harder than they gave themselves credit for. Rue blamed Larrikin. Larrikin blamed Vex. Rue demanded to know how it could possibly be Vex’s fault given the young idiot wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity, though naturally he quite understood Larrikin’s feelings about him because the irresponsible boy was, quite obviously, unsuited to the battlefield, but it was clearly Larrikin’s fault and Rue would thank him to take responsibility for himself.

By the end of the ensuing tirade, Ghastly was amused to see that Larrikin wore a furrow in his brow as he tried to figure out just how he’d wound up defending Vex to ... well, Vex. Even if it had been as slight as a mumbled, “He isn’t _that_ bad,” where Rue couldn’t hear it.

Frankly, for himself, Ghastly would have been convinced Rue was an entirely different person if not for Skulduggery’s assessment and the way Hopeless seemed unconcerned by this apparent interloper. Thanks to their certainty, Ghastly watched carefully, and the tailor managed to catch glimpses of Vex—a compression of his lips to avoid laughing, the way he pulled his wig low to hide the gleam in his eyes, the dismissive way Rue flapped his hand.

The most amazing thing about it all was that in the space of less than twenty-four hours Dex had changed Larrikin’s stony demeanour to near-constant bafflement. Larrikin didn’t know Skulduggery as well as Ghastly did. And apparently he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Hopeless’s tacit support of Rue.

“Does he actually believe it’s someone else?” Ghastly asked Hopeless in undertone as the boat drew into the dock, watching Larrikin watching Rue.

“He’s wondering,” Descry answered, his mouth set to that suspicious straight line that said his amusement was just barely leashed. Ghastly almost felt sorry for the man. Enough generated mirth and he was all but helpless. It made the tailor wonder just what the man was reading from them all, and in what kind of detail. For that reason, Ghastly tried to keep his thoughts as blank as possible—for both their sakes.

He suspected there was good reason why the mind-reader was walking so close to Skulduggery.

“Part of him knows it’s Vex,” the redhead continued. “Part of him kind of wishes it isn’t, though.”

“Why’s that?”

Descry glanced across to give him a small, secretive smile. “Because Rover’s never needed to forgive someone before. Or had someone to forgive, for that matter. He doesn’t realise he already has, so he doesn’t want to admit that he’s finding all this hilarious. If he accepts it at face value he can just pass Rue off as an idiot. Except he can’t.”

For a moment there was silence as Ghastly marvelled at that. Then, in his characteristic way of not having let on that he was even interested in the conversation, Skulduggery tilted his head in their direction. “If he doesn’t know it, how can he be thinking it for you to read?”

Trust Skulduggery to take it literally. Descry just laughed. “Thoughts have a certain intonation just like spoken words do. Trust me, he’s already there. He just doesn’t know how to accept an apology.”

He sounded so sure of himself that Ghastly felt a chill down his spine as he wondered again just how _much_ Hopeless really knew about each of them except Skulduggery. Had he actively gone looking, or was simply absorbing everything over time?

Either way, the tailor carefully blanked his mind yet again. Just in case.

The boat took them south along Ireland’s coast and down to Brest, on France’s western shore. From there it was all on foot; needing seven horses would have drawn far too much attention. Not that it stopped Rue from whining, every step of the way, about his sore feet. When Ghastly offered to rip off his heels, Rue had looked utterly horrified.

They were in Nantes when they found the first of the refugees.

It was in a tavern, a mortal one. Skulduggery had covered up. So had Ghastly. It was cool enough that no one really took notice, since they weren’t the only ones. Rue—it was impossible not to think of him as Rue, even knowing it was Vex; his attitude and demeanour were too different—had drawn attention to them anyway. It was only in the way an idiot might, but it had thereby forced Anton and Ghastly to sit on him to get him to (mostly) shut up.

“Are you ready to stop complaining now?” Ghastly asked the man. Rue said something, but given that his face was pressed into the stained velvet of the booth, it came out muffled and unintelligible. “Sorry, what was that?”

Rue lifted a hand and turned his face enough to the side to wheeze, “Get off me, you pulchritudinous cretin!”

“But I’m comfortable,” Ghastly objected, and glanced to Anton sitting beside him, who was digging into his bowl of soup despite Rue’s declaration that it was ‘thin, stringy, and overladen with offal’. “Are you comfortable, Anton?”

“I’m very comfortable, Ghastly, thank you,” Anton said mildly.

“Since when have peasants had table manners?” Erskine wondered out loud, still grinning the same grin since the pair had sat on Rue.

“Since when have table manners been a common feature of wealthy merchants?” Anton asked, ignoring Rue’s squawk.

“I’ll show you manners!”

It was really too bad for him that his shoes made up the extra two or so inches of height necessary to put Rue taller than both of them. Ghastly was twice his weight in muscle as it was, and Anton wiry with hard labour. Rue only had enough muscle to shift maybe one.

Larrikin hadn’t stopped laughing yet. Ghastly wondered how long it would be before he burst a vein.

In the end, it was Hopeless who drew their attention from Rue’s idiocy to the people around them. He was seated in the corner, with his hood up like Skulduggery and Ghastly. The tailor had thought _he_ was a man who didn’t like being on display—which he didn’t. Yet there were times when Hopeless seemed to have an almost genuine fear of it.

Like when they were in unknown taverns.

He spoke quietly but without urgency so as not to attract more attention than they already were. “That man in the corner, with the red scarf. He’s one of ours. He recognised Erskine.”

“Of course he did,” Erskine said with affected dignity. “I’m unforgettable.”

“Which means that you should stay here and not draw attention to him,” Skulduggery pointed out, and Erskine’s shoulders slumped.

“Damn. I always enjoy meeting a camp-follower.”

“ _I_ will go,” said Rue, sounding breathless and striving for dignity. He sounded faintly petulant instead. “Obviously, this situation needs a man of tact and subtlety.”

“Right,” Skulduggery agreed. “So Ghastly should go. There’s enough people wrapped up here that he won’t look odd just for that.”

“Oh. In that case, yes.” Rue flapped a hand weakly at the tailor. “Off with you, olyfaunt.”

“I think I should take umbrage at that,” Ghastly observed quietly, and slid out of his seat with a smooth motion that belied his size. Rue had barely risen onto his elbows when Anton shuffled along to the small of his back, neatly preventing him from lifting himself any higher. He was, however, able to twist enough to glare over his shoulder.

“Malodorous troll.”

“Thank you,” Anton said, unperturbed, and after a moment Rue deflated.

“May I have my soup back?” he asked plaintively, and then added, lifting his chin, “ _not_ , of course, that I have changed my mind about the nature of its _quality_ , mark you.”

“Of course not,” Erskine echoed with a smirk, and set the bowl down on the seat in front of him, spoon-handle just within Rue’s shortened reach. “Bon appétit.”

Ghastly was grinning from within his hood as he turned to move toward the bar, not directly at the man Descry had pointed out but somewhere off to the side of him. The tailor leaned over the counter to order some beer and then, casually, glanced at the man in question.

“You look beat. Where’d you come from?”

Something in the man’s face flickered with recognition, and although he didn’t _relax_ , some of the tension escaped from the hunch in his shoulders. “Marseille,” he said, “but the weather’s lousy over that way.”

He knew the codes. That was good. “We were headed in that direction,” Ghastly noted with a jerk of his head back toward the group, putting some dismay into his voice. “What kind of weather are we talking?”

The man nodded, glancing over Ghastly’s shoulder again, and he relaxed a little more. “I thought I recognised one of you. Are you really heading into Marseille?”

Ghastly could only shrug in response to the incredulous look the man was throwing him. “Be good if you could give us more up-to-date info on what to expect.”

“Marseille is _overrun_ ,” said the man bluntly, leaning in and speaking in Irish. “The mortals may not know it, but it is. I saw Vengeous there myself, striding down the street like he owned the place. We had two safehouses in that city, and they’ve both been rooted out.”

_Both_  of them? All the rebellion had? A chill ran down Ghastly’s down and across his skin. There were only two possible reasons for that. One, there was a  traitor. Or two, Bliss’s own sister had charmed someone into telling her where they were, and she’d told her masters. “And Bliss?”

“That was the weird thing,” said the man, and now he frowned with clear puzzlement. “If it weren’t for him, most of us would be dead. Some of us are anyway; they didn’t listen to the warning. Said it was a trap.”

Understandable at first glance, given Bliss’s unprecedented actions, but only until you thought about it and realised that Bliss would have had no reason to do what he did if he already knew they were there. Yet, abruptly Ghastly felt a pang of suspicion. “If the city is that badly lost to Mevolent, how did you get out?”

“Sagacious Tome,” said the man after a pause and with a shrug. “The Teleporter. He’s been bringing people out of Marseille into Nantes for the last two days.”

Ghastly didn’t tense, but he felt a definite surge of adrenaline and sat a little more upright. “Where to?” he demanded, but the man looked at him in disbelief.

“You’re not seriously still planning to go into there? That city’s _lost_ , man! Give it up!”

“Where in Nantes is he bringing them?” Ghastly repeated, flattening his voice just a little further.

The man shook his head. “In a building in Bouffey district, right up against the castle wall. But you’re dead men if you go in there.”

“Thanks,” Ghastly said just as his beer came, and he pushed it at the man. “All yours.” Without waiting for a response, the tailor rose and turned back to the group waiting expectantly at the table behind him.

“That’s a very grim look you’re wearing,” Erskine observed as Ghastly approached. Ghastly, startled, instinctively reached up to pull his hood closer only to find that he couldn’t, and Erskine laughed. Ghastly turned automatically toward Hopeless, but the mind-reader raised his hands.

“Don’t look at me; blame Skulduggery. Something about your walk, apparently.”

Ghastly threw an unseen exasperated glance toward the skeleton, which Skulduggery acknowledged with a minor tilt of his head. Then the tailor took Rue’s mostly-empty bowl, ignoring the man’s yelp of objection, and retook his seat on the man’s back (Anton scooting over to give him room).

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” he said, “but I’ve earned my meal for tonight.”

“Sagacious Tome in the Bouffey district by the castle wall,” Larrikin said promptly as he reached over the table for Rue’s bowl and lifted it to his mouth to drain it entirely.

“Steal all my thunder, why don’t you,” Ghastly grumbled equally to Descry and Skulduggery.

“That, I admit, was my fault,” Hopeless confessed, and craned his head. “Are you quite all right there, Rue?”

The not-quite-so-perfectly-coiffed man had been muttering into the chair all over again, a long litany of probable insults to which Ghastly wasn’t bothering to listen.

“No!” was Rue’s resounding answer, muffled though it was.

“Cheer up,” Ghastly told him. “We’re about to sneak into the lion’s den from behind.”

“ _If_ the man’s not lying about Tome,” Rue muttered into the stained velvet.

“He wasn’t,” Hopeless said on the heels of his words, “but that doesn’t mean Tome is still in the area. Teleporters aren’t usually so altruistic. He could have been the only one Tome rescued, and by chance at that.”

“Either way, we need to have a look,” Skulduggery noted, and rose, apparently deciding for them that the others had had plenty long enough to eat and it was about time they got moving instead of wasting time on such trivialities. (It was all in the tilt of his body. Ghastly had gotten very good at reading it, even with all the layers the skeleton was wearing.)

One by one the group rose to follow, letting cutlery fall. Ghastly stayed a moment, glancing down to where Rue was drumming his fingers impatiently on the seat-top. “Are you following,” Rue asked waspishly, “or are we to share this booth together into the night?”

“Only in your dreams, Rue,” Ghastly said with a smile, and then added in undertone, “how’s your back?”

“You owe me a Chinese masseuse when this is all over,” Dex whispered, and before Ghastly could react he segued nearly into Rue’s dulcet tones. “Then _off_ with you, distorted knave! I’m not a horse to be ridden!”

“Really? And you cantered so well, too,” Larrikin shot back over his shoulder from halfway to the door. “Or so I hear from Anton and Ghastly.”

“Best ride _I_ ever had,” Anton agreed.

Rue was still spluttering after Ghastly had finished laughing, risen, and hauled the man to his feet, setting him down gently on his absurdly high-heeled shoes.


	4. Rueful days (part two)

The sunlight was already fading, but the group spared the time to split and look up the rebellion’s watchhouses in Nantes. There were two of them, now Marseille had been lost, and mostly bursting with magical refugees from the eastern side of France. They were able to talk to a few more people and confirm that a Teleporter was involved, as well as the exact location, before meeting up again only a street or two away from the rendezvous point near the castle.

“And how _long_ , precisely, shall we be forced to wait?” Rue asked archly almost as soon as they’d all arrived and scouted the house to Skulduggery’s satisfaction.

“Tome seems to be coming in around dusk,” Hopeless answered, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms across his chest. Ghastly checked himself from peering into the gloom. It wasn’t as if Hopeless wouldn’t know whether someone was coming or not, and they’d all made sure they hadn’t drawn enough attention to be followed.

“So it’ll be any time now,” he concluded, and looked around the building instead. It was decrepit, tumbledown—more a hovel than an actual building, squeezed up against the castle wall. It had probably once been an old guardhouse or escape route; now it was just a hole in the wall, barely noticeable unless you knew it was there.

Two years ago it would have taken a group the same size a few hours to find the exact area, even with witness descriptions. With Hopeless, it only took walking into a watchhouse. Ghastly wondered what they’d ever done without a mind-reader around. Come to think of it, how was Meritorious faring?

As it was, now they just had to wait. With a sigh Ghastly settled down on an empty crate, daring to lower his hood for a breath of fresh night air seeping in through the cracks in the walls. The others situated themselves as well, in their usual places. Not that Ghastly had ever quite stopped to consider it, but now he looked around and noticed with astonished amusement that, yes, they were similar kinds of locations they always moved into, even after a handful of missions.

They weren’t always _exactly_ the same ones; versatility was a requirement in war for anyone who wanted to live through it. But their main gravitational point was Hopeless, because he was the least capable fighter among them and their greatest asset; their second was Ghastly, just because Ghastly was the first to sit at ease. Between those two points, the other five had situated themselves in primary positions to keep watch and ambush anyone who might try to ambush _them._ It was fascinating. It was funny.

It filled Ghastly with a warm glow. Even Rue, without thinking and without halting his complaints about the wait, the building and the city in general, had taken Vex’s place. If Ghastly had needed any proof other than the Adept’s breaking character, that would have done it.

Only a handful of missions, and already they located themselves around each other. Ghastly shook his head, smiling, and leaned against the stone so he could see through the cracks into the alley.

Time passed. Ghastly kept his gaze where it was, half listening to Larrikin and Ravel’s quiet but heated debate about the benefits and drawbacks of corsets versus bustiers, with an occasional scathing remark from Rue thrown in.

There was no warning. One moment there was only seven of them in the room, and the next there was twice that. The soldiers tensed and turned; the refugees, one moment relaxed, snapped back to terror.

“Link together!” snapped someone in the middle.

“Wait.” Skulduggery stepped out from his corner, letting the moonlight touch on his bare skull. A moment passed, and the refugees still weren’t gone; and then another moment later a man was pushing out from the centre of the group. Sagacious Tome was a man who looked unhealthy without a bit—or a lot—of weight to him. Right now he was as scrawny as any peasant, with the result that he looked very unhealthy indeed. He had a patchy beard, rings around his eyes, and relief all over the lines of his face. The last was odd given he was looking at Skulduggery, and most people who first laid eyes on Skulduggery looked stunned or terrified.

“I know you. Skulduggery Pleasant.”

“I certainly hope so,” Skulduggery replied.

Tome looked around at the rest of them, shadows against the walls. “Our message got through, then.”

“That it did,” Skulduggery agreed. “Now we’re here because we need a favour. We need you to take us into Marseille.”

The Teleporter blanched. “You don’t want to do that. Vengeous and Bliss are wandering around. Probably Serpine too.”

“That’s what makes it fun to walk into the lion’s den,” Larrikin said cheerfully. “If there’s _lions_ around.” Then he stopped. “Wait. _And_ Serpine?”

“That’s new,” Erskine agreed, and shot a cocky grin at Larrikin. “I’m game if you are, circus mutt.”

In the darkness Larrikin’s responding glance could have been anything from a glare to cockiness back. His tone left no such doubt. “I’m there if only to make sure you don’t walk out and get yourself killed, Ravel.”

Erskine winced. Ghastly shifted on his crate to turn more toward Tome. “We need to know how bad it is,” he said. “You don’t have to stay.”

“It’s too bad to just go running in half-arsed,” Tome said with a shake of his head.

“Therefore we go in _all_ arsed,” Rue said frostily. “Really, man, is it truly worth your time and trouble to argue with a group of madmen, from which I am, of course, exempt?”

Tome scowled at him. “You’re all _dead_ men if you want to go to Marseille. Look, just don’t mess up the arrangements I’ve made to get people out by doing something stupid like getting yourselves found, tortured or killed.”

“We have standing orders not to be killed,” Anton informed him.

“Besides, whatever gave you the idea we’d do anything stupid?” Erskine asked innocently.

“I’m writing out a list on _your_ behalf,” Larrikin told him. With a roll of his eyes Tome held out his hands.

“Hurry up. Link up. If you’re going to be fools let’s be quick about it.”

The refugees made space by trailing out the door like a family of rats abandoning a sinking ship. The group of soldiers moved in closer, joining hands as Tome directed. Barely an instant after they’d done so the world leapt and they were somewhere else entirely. Larrikin staggered, swearing; Anton caught him by the shoulder. Ghastly swayed a little before catching his balance. Rue tottered dangerously for a moment before regaining his feet. The only ones not put off were Tome himself, Skulduggery and Hopeless.

Barely a moment in Marseille and Tome Teleported out again, without a word of censure or encouragement.

Ghastly straightened, summoning a flame and glancing around. The room they were in wasn’t much better than the one in which they had been. The only difference was that it was a cellar, the cracks in the walls filled with earth or roots. It stank of dry dust and dying mildew, and someone coughed.

“The least he could’ve done is brought us somewhere there was actually something to drink,” Erskine grumbled, nudging an empty crate with his boot while holding his own flames up high. The crate collapsed in on itself, sending a rat shooting across the floor.

“But at least he provided supper, if you’d only been fast enough,” Anton observed.

“We shouldn’t stick around for any extra meals,” Skulduggery said. “It’s possible, even likely, that Mevolent’s forces already know about this contact point.”

“We can’t be reckless, either,” Hopeless added, looked a little pale. Or maybe that was just the light. “Serpine has been seen here as well as Vengeous and Bliss. I don’t know if he still is, but it’s not worth the risk.”

“Well, that’s just dandy,” Larrikin muttered. “Who wanted to go talking into this lion’s den again?”

“You weren’t exactly objecting,” Ghastly pointed out.

“Only because someone needs to protect the idiots,” Larrikin said with admirable dignity given that he wasn’t at all a man to whom dignity took well. Mostly, on him, dignity looked like he was a child wearing his father’s suits.

Hopeless shook his head, smiling, but then he said, “We need to go. The streets are relatively clear for now, but the markets are ending. People will be coming home.”

“Just where _are_ we?” Rue demanded loftily.

“We’re not far from the bazaar,” Hopeless explained, “in a district of merchants’ houses. This cellar belonged to a silk-merchant. Something happened to his house and the ones on either side took over the land and built over the cellar. I suppose neither of them knew it was there.”

“Or maybe they couldn’t find a way to split it down the middle,” Skulduggery said, “or maybe the cellar was too well-hidden for them to find because it was a clandestine front for the exciting smuggled-silk trade. What does it matter? The true question is, how do we get _out_?”

He said it, Ghastly noted, in such a tone he knew well. He knew it because it was Skulduggery’s leading tone. The tone he used when he knew the answer to his own question, but he was asking so someone else would ask _him_ what the answer was.

“How _do_ we get out?” he asked patiently, cutting to the chase.

Skulduggery tilted his head in a near-petulant manner. “It’s more fun if you make them guess.”

“Funnily enough, it also wastes plenty of time,” Ghastly said. “We already know you’re smarter and more observant than us, Skulduggery. There’s no need to prove it.”

“Well, if you insist.” The skeleton pointed a finger toward a particularly black patch of wall. “We climb out where those stones have broken through into an airshaft, of course.”

“We climb out?” Larrikin looked a little green. “Through _that_ tiny hole?”

“I’d have thought a rat like you would be used to holes,” Anton observed quietly.

“I’ve lived in enough holes to last me a lifetime,” Rover grumbled.

“Come, come, now, let’s not dally!” Rue clapped his hands and the noise was oddly muffled in the dank, tiny room. To his credit, he managed not to wince as Vex most certainly would have; instead he only cast an irritated look up at the ceiling, as if blaming it for the noise (or lack thereof).

“ _Really_ ,” he huffed, and turned toward the opening, feeling out its dimensions. From a distance it really did just look like a shadow on the wall, but then Rue stuck his hand into it, then his shoulders, and then with a grunt his whole body, high-heel-shoed feet kicking for purchase. It looked, Ghastly silently agreed with Erskine’s stifled snicker, utterly ridiculous.

“Descry should go next,” Skulduggery ordered, but the mind-reader was already moving toward the hole. At its edge he paused and glanced back, looking directly at Ghastly.

“You’re going to have trouble getting up.”

With that delightful news he ducked into the gap, vanishing with far more grace than Rue. “See,” said Erskine, “I knew you needed to lose weight.”

“ _I_ knew I should have brought that oil,” Larrikin muttered, staring at Ghastly with an odd little smirk that made the tailor nervous. He tilted his head. “Boxers are _meant_ to be all oiled up, aren’t they?”

Oh. Well, it wasn’t untrue.

“I had no idea you were so interested, Rover,” Ghastly said mildly, “or I might have obliged you sooner.”

“We can make it a date,” Rover decided, moving toward the door with the look of a man approaching something they really, really didn’t want to do, but which they may as well get done. Within a few moments he’d vanished into the opening, wriggling upward with an ease that belied his grumbles.

One by one the others scrambled up until only Anton and Ghastly were left. With a grimace Ghastly approached the exit and peered up into the darkness. The tunnel itself had been deliberately hollowed and walled, but as an airshaft. It hadn’t quite connected through the wall until the stones had been broken; or maybe it had been connected, but not with an opening large enough to fit anyone through. There might have been a copper grate in the wall where the duct ran alongside it, but it had broken—or been broken—so now there was only a hole. A hole through which Ghastly doubted he could fit.

“You should go first,” he said to Anton, but the Gist-user shook his head.

“You might need a push. Can you break it open wider?”

“Not without alerting someone or bringing the ceiling down,” Ghastly admitted with a grimace. He ducked into the hole, squeezing his shoulders as tight as he could and bracing himself from the bottom. It wasn’t easy; the dirt made for poor footing, loose as it was. Ghastly found himself glad Anton was there when the man gave him an extra boost and something to push against.

The dirt muffled the others’ quiet voices, but Ghastly could hear and feel the vibrations of quiet stonework. Earth and pebbles came clattering down the shaft, getting in his eyes. Ghastly turned his face down and coughed, the air stiflingly close, the tunnel tight around his shoulders.

“Sorry,” Erskine stage-whispered down, his voice dulled. “Can you reach up?”

“Give me a moment.” With a grunt Ghastly worked his arms up, his shoulders straining against the weight of the earth around him. He felt for the lip of the shaft and for a moment found it, realising abruptly that it was only a couple of feet longer than he was tall, and it was only because of his shoulders that he was having trouble.

Then someone clasped his wrists firmly, he pulled his shoulders together, Anton pushed at his feet and he went scraping upward, slowly and with stone grinding over his shoulders every step of the way. Ghastly gritted his teeth, but sooner than he was expecting the exit opened out marginally—enough to let him through. Within a few moments he’d been hauled up into the alley and he slumped against the wall, massaging his arms.

“Let’s not take our leave the same way,” he said ruefully.

“Greece is only a few countries over,” Larrikin said brightly, reaching into the hole to take Anton’s hand and help him easily out of the tunnel. “We can always make a detour to buy you that oil for the trip down.”

Anton raised an eyebrow at him, dusting himself off. “What’s this now, Rover? Ought I be jealous?”

“What’ve you got to be jealous about?” Larrikin demanded. “We share a tent and on cold nights you _still_ refuse to sleep with me.”

“You _cuddle_ ,” Anton pointed out with great and scathing finality.

“Nothing wrong with cuddling,” Larrikin grumbled. “Everybody can use a cuddle every now and then.”

“Are we done playing fools?” Rue asked frostily. “May we proceed?”

“I’m done,” Anton said, “but I’m not so sure Rover was even playing. That would imply he’s putting on some kind of pretence.”

“Whether you’re done or not we need to go,” Hopeless said quietly from the alley-entrance, where he was standing on guard with his head tilted the way it did when he was listening hard for things no one else could hear. “The market is breaking up.”

“And where, precisely, are we going?” Rue demanded with asperity.

“To one of the old safehouses,” Larrikin replied in much the same tone.

“To be discovered and reaped like wheat in a field? No, thank you.”

“What are you, a starving poet?”

“We need to investigate the safehouses anyway,” Skulduggery cut into the brewing argument. Larrikin blinked and frowned, glancing sidelong at Rue with an odd look on his face.

“Do you know where they are, dead man?” Rue demanded.

“I do,” Erskine volunteered cheerfully.

“Oh, jolly good,” muttered Rue. “Shall we at least exercise some base _caution_ as we approach?”

“What’s the word? I don’t think that word is even English. I think you made it up.” Without waiting for a response Erskine ducked out of the alley and onto the street, pulling his hood up as he went. One by one the others followed, not exactly hiding in the shadows and under the eaves of houses but keeping to the sides as they ambled along. Rue, predictably, was grumbling under his breath, and every now and then an occasional punctuated word would drift in the quiet night toward his comrades.

“Ridiculous ... outrage ... beastly ... death-trap ... honestly!”

Ghastly grinned to himself as they moved. The journey wasn’t in complete silence, because they were acting just like any other night-goers and chatting quietly. Skulduggery didn’t speak at all; his voice was the most distinctive among them. It was all so very amiable that Ghastly could almost forget they were deep in enemy territory. Almost.

Eventually Erskine, in the lead, came to an abrupt halt in the street. Ghastly, his gut clenching, came nearer when Descry called in a startling good French accent, “Took a wrong turn, my friend?”

Erskine turned casually, his voice lower and rougher than usual as a cover. “Must’ve. Let’s backtrack a bit.”

He came back down the street, and those of the group he passed paused and came back with him. No one asked what had happened. It could have been anything. The one thing it wasn’t was a wrong turn. Now just wasn’t the time for details.

The other safehouse was further away, and now Ghastly felt much less amiable. It was getting darker and though there were others on the streets they weren’t so much respectable people on the way home and were more cut-throats and footpads waiting for a good target. That, or spies. They could very easily be spies. Ghastly’s shoulders were tense, and he kept looking this way and that out from under his hood.

It seemed to take forever before Erskine turned easily from the main street into an inn and vanished from sight. The others followed in quick succession, just a group of unidentifiable foreigners—some of them—making their way from drink to drink. Almost the instant Ghastly passed through the doors Erskine slung an arm over his shoulders.

“Which do you like better?” he asked cheerfully, and nodded toward the waitresses. “The petite blonde or the one with the bosom?”

“Er ...” Ghastly automatically looked.

“The entrance’s on the first floor, last room on the left,” Erskine said quietly into his ear, in a tone as if he was whispering a jibe. Ghastly smiled and took the other sorcerer’s arm off his shoulder.

“My friend,” he said in a normal tone, covering his accent, “I could seduce a lady before you finished your first mug of beer.”

“Now them’s fighting words,” Erskine said, amusement all in his voice, and Ghastly grinned back at him from under his hood. “One day I might have to take you up on that.”

“You’ll rue that day,” Ghastly told him.

“I’m Rueing _this_ day.” Erskine pointed to where Rue was loudly making a spectacle of himself at the bar. “And so is he.”

“What do you _mean_ you don’t serve cask ale?” he was now demanding in outrage, in his ridiculously poncy English accent. Ghastly shook his head.

“At least no one’s going to believe we’re here, with that racket. His disguise might turn out to be our saving grace.”

“Don’t tell Larrikin that, or he’ll explode trying to figure it out,” Erskine muttered, and Ghastly wondered if he’d mistaken the edge of irritation in his tone. Probably not. Larrikin had barely been glancing at him either.

“You _were_ idiots,” he pointed out, because it was just a little stupid to get annoyed at Larrikin for not getting over it after what they’d done.

“To _Anton_!” Erskine protested. “We didn’t touch Larrikin!”

“The same way that bloke you almost drowned didn’t touch you when he started wondering if Corrival took boys into his tent?” Ghastly asked boldly. He’d known Erskine, even if peripherally, before Deuce had called them all together, or else he might never have dared to bring it up. Erskine looked at him sharply, his eyes narrowing, and for a moment Ghastly wondered if he’d crossed a line; then Erskine laughed.

“A hit, Bespoke, a solid hit. Even though you’re wrong. What he said _did_ concern me. A lot. But your point’s taken.”

“That’s good. I’d have hated having to break your pretty face if you’d punched me,” Ghastly said deadpan as they reached the stairs, having been making their way through the crowd, unnoticed in the face of Rue’s distraction.

“You’d have had to catch me first, ogre.”

“Two words, faery queen: cold iron.”

Still bantering, they slipped easily up the stairs, and Ghastly paused to listen to Rue’s dulled voice, wondering how he intended to join them if he got thrown out. Ah, well. Too late now. The group trickled in slowly until Anton closed the door behind him.

“Rue?” Ghastly asked, but Anton shook his head.

“Tossed on his arse.”

“Well, that’s dandy,” Larrikin muttered. “Figures he’d—”

He paused then, an odd expression crossing his face, at the sound of someone scrabbling at the window. Erskine looked first and broke into a fierce grin. “Who said anything about him holding us up?”

“Technically, Larrikin didn’t,” Skulduggery murmured.

None of the others really got a chance to see what he was looking at because a moment later the window swung open and there, crouching on the sill, was Rue. “Uncultured cretins,” he muttered, straightening his cuffs, and then gripped the frame so he could shout over his shoulder. “Doors are for people with no imagination, anyway!”

“Get in here, you idiot,” Rover hissed, dragging him down to the floor and closing the window with a snap. Descry covered his mouth in a way Ghastly had noticed he did when someone was having a thought they had no intention of airing. With something between a huff and a sneer Rue got to his feet.

“Unhand me, footpad,” he grumbled, brushing off his clothes with a sniff.

“I can un _man_ you, if you’d prefer,” Rover shot back, and then only a moment later realised the second meaning. Incredibly, he flushed and actually tried to backpedal. “I mean, uh ...”

Rue’s face was also red, though his was more likely from feigned fury. “I’m twice the man of _you_ , Rover Larrikin!” He, however, didn’t seem to realise his double entendre, and resorted to flouncing to another corner of the room before remembering he didn’t know where the entrance to the safehouse actually was. “And _how_ , precisely, are we meant to enter?” he demanded, crossing his arms at Erskine.

Erskine coughed like he was trying not to laugh and bowed with a flourish. “Of course, my dear Rue. Is that your first name or your second? You never told us.”

“That,” Rue said frostily, “is _mine_ to know.”

“Why?” Erskine asked innocently. “Is it an awful name? Is it like a crone having the name Fíona or a magickless fop calling himself Anlon or—”

“We shouldn’t dally,” Hopeless advised, probably, Ghastly thought, as much for his own sake as for the needs of the mission.

“But what if I need a little stress-relieving tumble?” Rover protested.

“You’ll only be Rueful in the morning,” Ghastly replied, absolutely deadpan, and Descry extended a finger at him.

“You are still not helping, Bespoke. Erskine, please.” It wasn’t exactly a plea in his voice, but there was a note of restraint, the sort belonging to a man who was having more trouble than they had previously let on. This time Erskine heard it and sobered up marginally. His smirk didn’t exactly leave, but he at least nodded and turned toward the wall the room shared with the next building.

“Behold.” With a flourish he reached out and pulled down the sconce set in-between two stones. He had to put some muscle into it, but with a grind the sconce came down and, in the corner, a slab of rock emerged from the wall and slid aside. Skulduggery tilted his head.

“Interesting. Pulley system?”

“Something like that,” Erskine said with a shrug, brushing off his hands and pointing at Ghastly. “Next time _you’re_ unlocking the door, dear.” With that parting shot he climbed into the hole, and Ghastly heard the rattle of a ladder. The hole looking worryingly small.

Descry looked at him sidelong and with a hint of a smile. “You’ll be fine.”

 _Easy for you to say,_ Ghastly thought, and Descry laughed as he ducked into the hole. The sound, even as quiet as Descry’s laughs usually were, echoed in the narrow space.

One by one they made their way into the wall, climbing down past the muffled hubbub of tavern-goers and into a tunnel alongside the cellar. Ghastly didn’t get stuck, but he did feel the closeness of the space with the rasp of stone against his shoulders every now and then. The tunnel was so narrow he only fit sideways, and the bilge was deep enough to wet the hems of his trousers when he moved. He really, he thought, needed to figure out how to combine weather-proofing with impenetrability.

Rue sniffed and muttered in the near-darkness. Only one of the Elementals could afford a light in the narrow space, and Erskine was elected torch-bearer; Rue was nearly on the end of the line, with the effect that his powdered face looked ghostly in the shadows. This far down, all noise was dulled, so Ghastly couldn’t see what Rue was complaining about—but from the way he was lifting his feet and wrinkling his nose while trying to peer down, the tailor could guess.

No one else said anything. They filed down the corridor, unspeaking, until they came to a dead-end. Erskine snuffed out his flames and Ghastly summoned his own in time to see the man reach up and vault onto the far-shorter-than-apparent wall, vanishing into the shadow.

“ _Now_ you might have a bit of trouble,” Descry said somewhere in the darkness.

“You’re taking far too much glee in that, I hope you know.”

“I beg to differ. I think I’m taking just the right amount of glee.”

“I still think we should make a detour to Greece,” Rover complained. “Does it count as sanctification if you’re using _extra_ -virgin olive-oil to oil up a boxer?”

“Ridiculous,” Rue muttered, his voice only half audible. “Travesty—ignoble—idiot—”

“It might,” Erskine said, his voice echoing over the wall. “We could always test it out with some extra-virgin olive-oil and a boxer.”

“We _do_ have a volunteer,” Anton pointed out, just before he vanished into the same shadow Erskine had.

“Really? Who?” Ghastly asked pointedly, snuffing out his flame and feeling for the edge of the wall. A moment later there was light behind him; with a grunt he hauled himself up, nearly bashed his head on the ceiling, and misjudged how wide the wall actually was by trying to put his hand down on air. Fortunately Erskine and Anton were there to catch him, even though Erskine groaned melodramatically about his weight.

“It’s narrow,” he called back rather lamely once he was back on his feet.

“And Ghastly is graceful as a ballerina,” Erskine added, rubbing his shoulder and wincing. “I think I need a back-rub.”

“Ask Dex when we get back to camp,” Rover told him over the wall. “My hands are tied up. Tally-ho!”

The last was said with such sarcasm that Ghastly snorted and almost didn’t get out of the way in time when Rover came somersaulting over the wall and in the impossibly tight space. The tailor eyeballed him jealously as he dusted himself off, and elected to stand out of the way with a ball of flames in his hand to light the area.

It must have taken the better part of fifteen minutes before they had all made it to the wall, at which point Ghastly was really starting to feel claustrophobic. The safehouse’s back entrance may have been _safe_ , but it really wasn’t built for men with shoulders as broad as Ghastly’s. The moment the last man—Rue, complaining about the damage to his heels—was in the same stretch of tunnel, Ghastly turned and set off down the passage, flames held aloft.

The others spoke behind him, but with the dullness of the echoes he couldn’t hear what they were saying. He just walked on until he came to another dead-end and stopped. “Where to now?”

“There’s a trap-door over your head,” Erskine called, and Ghastly glanced up to see the square of stone which had obviously been moved in the past. “And a pulley-system just to your left—”

“It’s not going to work,” Descry cut in from right over Ghastly’s shoulder. The tailor turned with a frown to see the mind-reader also looking up at the ceiling, head half-tilted and with that particular thinness around his mouth that spoke of Bad Things.

“Why not?” he asked. Descry lowered his gaze to meet Ghastly’s, but his eyes were distant in a way Ghastly had never before seen on him. It was the same sort of look Sensitives got when they were working their magic, when they were reaching for something no one else could imagine.

“There are people trapped in the cellar,” he said.

“We’re _in_ the cellar,” Anton pointed out.

“We’re in a tunnel alongside the cellar. The safehouse’s cellar was where people hid to maintain the cover of the tavern above. When Vengeous attacked the safehouse half of it was destroyed. The trapdoors are blocked from overhead. The area is guarded in case anyone makes a rescue attempt. There are people trapped in the cellar.”

The mind-reader spoke in with a monotonous distance that made Ghastly’s skin prickle, and the tailor shook him by the shoulder. “Descry?”

Descry blinked, the lines around his eyes creasing with confusion. “I’m—what?” He shook his head, rubbing his forehead. “Ghastly. I’m here.” Ghastly opened his mouth to ask what had happened, but Descry went on before he could. “There’s fourteen of them. There used to be nineteen. They’ve been there for ten days. They ran out of food in six. They’re relying on two Elementals for water. Mevolent’s people know they’re there, but they’re not bothering to dig them out.”

“Alright,” Ghastly said quietly, still feeling chilled, but not because they were underground. He called over Descry’s shoulder without taking his gaze off the man, “Hopeless is coming back up the tunnel. Erskine, Skulduggery, Rover, we’re going to need you closer.”

“We heard,” Erskine said. “People in the cellar next door, guards overhead. I hope you have a plan, Ghastly. You only just made me this suit.”

In spite of himself Ghastly managed a smile, squeezing Descry’s shoulder reassuringly before the man turned to slide past the others and join Rue and Anton further down the tunnel.

(“— _ridiculous_ , packed in here like sardines. I don’t even _like_ sardines—”

“Rue, shut up before I feed you some sardines.”)

Erskine was right behind him and came closer to where the trapdoor was. “The cellar’s right on the other side of this wall.” He tapped the left-hand stones. “Ghastly, if you’re planning to blow through this there’ll be too much noise. We might attract attention from the guards.”

“Not if we do it slowly,” Ghastly said.

“It won’t be that easy,” Rover objected. “If it were, the Elementals inside could have done the same thing themselves, even if they’re not as amazingly talented as we are.”

“Assuming it didn’t cause a bigger cave-in,” Skulduggery pointed out, “whereas our ceiling is still perfectly stable. Pardon me, Erskine.”

Erskine jumped back as Skulduggery lifted his hand and snapped his wrist, and a chunk of stone blew away with a soft puff of mortar, leaving a nice-sized piece missing  at about shoulder height. The mortar crumbled; Skulduggery had chosen the weakest point.

“Little warning would have been nice,” Erskine muttered.

“That _was_ your warning.”

“And it was nice.”

They took shifts. Skulduggery didn’t need the rest nor the escape from the dust, so the other three switched out as the air grew too dusty to handle. Rue’s muttered complaints about his bruises echoed down the passage and Anton was nearly invisible in the darkness, turned toward where they’d come—just in case—but Descry was silent and seated on the floor, his head back against the wall and his eyes closed. Ghastly chose not to disturb him.

It was nearly impossible to tell the passage of time. All Ghastly had to go on was the size of the hole they were making and how hungry they were getting. Or rather, how hungry Rover and Rue were getting. Ghastly was on his second rest-break, sitting quietly beside Hopeless, when there came a whoop from down the tunnel. Erskine, who was inspecting Rover’s dice suspiciously, looked up. Anton turned from his self-appointed guard-duty.

“Finally!” came Rover’s voice. “I’m so hungry I could eat an olyphant, offal and all!”

“Not this one you couldn’t,” Ghastly muttered, pushing himself to his feet.

“We’re nearly in,” Skulduggery said. “It might be best if we pushed through someone who doesn’t look too terribly threatening.”

“How about someone instantly recognisable?” Erskine asked innocently. Rue heaved a sigh, dusting himself off.

“ _Since_ you cads apparently feel you must dance around the suggestion, I will have to accept this venture myself, as you _obviously_ require a man of exceptional looks and courtesy—”

“Ghastly, you’re up,” Rover interrupted gleefully. Rue squawked.

“Not _that_ sort of exceptional looks! My good man, are you insane?”

“Erskine,” Descry said, finally opening his eyes but without yet rising. “They’ll recognise you.”

“They’d recognise Skulduggery too,” Erskine pointed out, but he got to his feet and brushed himself off, and then ducked down the passage. Ghastly offered Descry a hand; the mind-reader accepted it and was pulled to a stand, and one by one the others followed Erskine toward the hole. “Hallo,” Erskine called, quietly but carryingly. “This is your resident rebellious rescuer speaking. How badly is the ceiling holding up over there?”

For a minute there was no response. Then, distantly, they heard shuffling and debris groaning, and then a hoarse voice. “Thank God. Ravel? Erskine Ravel?”

“That’s my name,” Erskine said cheerfully, “no need to wear it out. Look, we’ve got about two thirds of the wall dug out right now, but we can’t finish the exit until we know how stable things are on the other side.”

“It should be stable enough in this corner,” the voice answered. “The beams are still intact. It’s the opposite that’s collapsed—where the trapdoor was. But there’s damage. We couldn’t risk trying to break through from this side. I reckon we could shore it up, though.”

“Alright. Give us a knock when you’re done and get everyone to move back, then. After that we should be through to you in about, I don’t know, ten minutes?”

“Eight of them will need help getting out,” Descry said quietly. “They’re too weak or injured to walk. The others are mobile, but the going will be slow. They’ll all have trouble climbing the ladder.”

“Unlike some _others_ I could mention, _I_ am prepared,” Rue said with a sniff, then thrust out his hands in front of Ghastly’s face. “Here, troll. Pass these down.”

He was holding cups. Plain wooden cups, small enough to be carried in a pack or cloak, and the way Rue pulled them out implied that was where he’d been carrying them. Ghastly knew better, and grinned. “Of course, Rue. You wouldn’t happen to have a rope with you, would you?”

Rue glared, reached into his pack, and withdrew a narrow but strong length of coiled rope to sling over his shoulder. “Any _other_ questions, cretin?”

“None at all,” Ghastly said with a note of laughter in his voice. He nudged Rover, handing him one of the cups. “Looks like we’re playing water-boys this evening.”

“Oh goody! Can we redefine the phrase?”

“That depends on which angle you were aiming for.”

“Children,” Descry murmured absently, leaning back up against the wall with his eyes closed. In spite of his tone, there was a hint of a smile on his lips, a fact of which Rover took full advantage.

“What? Is it not the purpose of language to be constantly redefined and renewed?”

As Erskine worked, the rest of the group strung themselves out in a line. Rue produced some candles from his bag, and they left a trail of tiny lights all through the tunnel. Ghastly and Anton, as the strongest physically and with arguably the deftest hands, were stationed at the top and bottom of the ladder. Ghastly looked around the tavern room and didn’t even feel bad about being glad he was out of the passage.

He tied a little bell to the rope and then lit the lamps with his candle, arranging the furniture so it was closer around the hole (and at the same time blocked the door). That was the good thing about France; tavern rooms generally had decent furniture. They were going to need it.

After that all he had to do was wait. Waiting was always the hardest part, the one that stretched the nerves, but at least now he could do so in a lit room as opposed to a waterlogged sewer.

Nearly twenty minutes later, the little bell jingled. By the time a head appeared in the shadow of the opening, its hair matted and oily, Ghastly was waiting beside it. He whistled softly and the head jerked up, the woman’s eyes darkly-ringed and wide in a pale face.

“Here.” Ghastly offered her his hand. She took it in a grip that was strong but trembling with exhaustion. The tailor lifted her up the last few feet and set her gently down on her knees. He was glad he’d brought the linens closer when she leaned into the floor, still looking too dazed to truly react or listen to instructions; he threw one of the sheets over her.

She started, wrapping it around herself and looking up at him. “Thank you.” 

“How bad off are the others?” he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder to help her upright and move her over to the loveseat, and offering her one of Rue’s cups.

“One of the Elementals should be able to make it up here on his own,” she said hoarsely, lifting her hands to take the empty cup. Her grip was too weak to hold it, so Ghastly did so for her, but her brow crinkled as she peered into it. “He stayed at the end of the line to help with the others. The rest will need to be roped up, and they’re going to have trouble with that low wall. I think the thin man in the hood was working on breaking it down.”

“Alright. Here.” Ghastly condensed a little water in the cup—only about a mouthful. She drank it as greedily as she could given the smallness of the offering, but Ghastly kept one hand under the cup as support and to keep condensing water at a safe rate. Finally she’d had enough and sank back into the loveseat, and Ghastly returned to his post.

 

It took the better part of three hours to get everyone upstairs. The children were the worst off and were sent up after the first woman—Francine. Rover replaced Anton at the bottom so the Gist-user could climb up with them, making more laps of the ladder than Ghastly wanted to count as a steadying presence while Ghastly raised them with the rope. Francine got enough of a second wind to give the children water and make sure they wouldn’t suffocate if they rolled over on the bed; once they had all been lifted to safety, Rue came up to help her and distract everyone with his bossy overzealousness and his nasal accent.

The main issue was those who were injured. Even with the refugees’ lack of food and Anton’s leanness, it was difficult to fit two people in the shaft at once, but equally so it was so narrow that Anton had to make the journey to make sure they weren’t hurt worse by the time they got to the top. Once everyone was out of the blocked safehouse and there was no need to guide them through the tunnel, Rover and Descry stationed themselves on the ladder; between the three of them they managed to keep most of the refugees from being hurt any worse than they’d been beforehand—which was bad enough.

They lost only one, an older sorcerer who had lasted in a semi-coma for the last five days, on the way up.

Finally they were done. Ghastly looked around, massaging his shoulders in-between filling one of Rue’s pitchers with water. The room was a large one for a tavern, but with twenty-one people in it, it looked very small; Ghastly was sitting on the trapdoor’s lower edge, half inside the shaft, because there simply wasn’t room for him. The fourteen refugees lay over the furniture and the floor, except for Francine and the Elemental whose name Ghastly hadn’t gotten, who were lending aid where they could. Erskine and Skulduggery were delivering water and food to those who could stomach it. Rue was squawking over by the loveseat, helping Francine help someone drink, deceptively gentle for all his complaints.

The children all fit on the bed, except for the eldest at thirteen, who was on the floor beside it with the youngest on her lap—and she, to Ghastly’s surprise, was in _Anton’s_ lap. His voice was a low murmur, the same low murmur that Ghastly had heard all the way up the ladder’s shaft while pulling the children to safety, as he told them a nursery story. Rover was entertaining the others with little finger-puppets who looked remarkably like himself and the Gist-user, accompanied with a high, squeaky voice and an overdone deep one. Descry was in the corner, bowed over the man who had died and his own voice soft as he gave the sorcerer last rites with the woollen prayer rope Ghastly hadn’t even known he owned.

Looking around again, Ghastly was struck by how little he actually knew these men, Skulduggery aside. At the same time, he rather felt this was the only place he wanted to be right now—here, with these men, doing what they were doing. Erskine came back to him with an empty pitcher and lifted an eyebrow.

“What’s that smirk for, Bespoke? I know I’m gorgeous, but the least you could do is display a little decorum. There’s children present.”

Ghastly shook his head and let the smile broaden. “Just thinking.”

“I knew it. I’m going to have to start locking my tent at night, aren’t I?” Erskine grinned back and exchanged his empty pitcher for Ghastly’s full one, and then turned to make another delivery.

Eventually the activity ran down. The refugees fell asleep, watered and fed—those that could be with the food Erskine and Rover had slipped downstairs to buy. Anton had tucked the children into the bed, even the thirteen-year-old who saw herself as their den-mother. In the stillness the soldiers naturally gravitated toward each other around the door. Skulduggery tilted his head at Anton.

“I never saw you as the paternal type.”

“I had nine younger siblings,” Anton said simply. Which made a lot of sense, but at the same time was unexpected. Anton Shudder was a self-contained man. You didn’t think of him as having attachments, especially since his association with Larrikin seemed to be enforced primarily _by_ Larrikin.

Then again, maybe that was why. Nine younger siblings. How many of them had been sorcerers too? Ghastly was willing to bet none.

Skulduggery’s skull shifted in Descry’s direction. “I can see you as the religious type, but I find it hard to understand why you of all people would be a believer.”

Descry, Ghastly saw, looked the most exhausted of the lot of them. He was pale and his eyes were darkly ringed in a lesser echo of the refugees’. Right now they were closed and he was leaning back against the wall. “I used to be a monk. We’re going to lose two more of these people before we get them out, you know.”

It was such an abrupt change of subject that Ghastly felt bewildered by it. Descry had been a monk? If he thought about it, Ghastly could see it, but it was still the complete opposite of what he expected from any sorcerer that it took the tailor a moment to catch up with the man’s second statement. “How do you know?”

Descry looked at him. Ghastly had thought he looked tired before, but in his eyes then was a deep fatigue that made Ghastly feel like he was drowning just to see it. “Their thoughts are slipping away. One of the children and the man with the head-injury. They won’t wake up.”

He spoke quietly, but there was a hollowness in his voice that made Ghastly wonder just how closely he was hearing those ‘slipping away’ thoughts.

“They might not be the only ones,” Skulduggery said. “Has anyone given a thought to how we’re meant to move these people through Marseille to the Teleportation point?”

“Walk?” Erskine suggested with a wince. “Carry? Rent a dog-sled?”

“Can we just leave them here?” Anton asked. “One of us can go back to Tome’s meeting-point and bring him to them.”

“It would take too long,” Descry said. “Mevolent’s forces are moving through the taverns to find anyone they missed. That’s what stalled us earlier—a patrol around the safehouse’s main tavern. They’ll reach here by morning. Tome will have checked in by the time one of us gets to his extraction point, and won’t be back again until midday.”

For several moments there was silence. Ghastly looked at the refugees sprawled across the room. All of them were asleep. Two of them wouldn’t even wake up. There were five children, and four of the eight remaining adults were injured. Of the last four, only two could walk without aid.

“We can use carts,” he said. “Pretend we’re carrying the dead. They look bad enough for it. They’ll have to be heaped in, but if we cover them with canvas no one should look too closely.”

“Isn’t it too late to go around looking for dead bodies?” Rover wondered. “Wouldn’t people _wonder_ about people who go around finding dead bodies this late at night? Aren’t there _words_ for people like that? Like ‘Necromancers’, maybe?”

“Necromancers don’t need bodies to go looking for death,” Skulduggery said a little more flatly than usual.

“It’s decided, then,” Erskine said. “We dress up as Necromancers.”

Smiles and chuckles went around, and even though it wasn’t all that funny Ghastly was still glad to see the corners of Descry’s mouth lift. It was better than the absolute weariness in his eyes. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best they had, so Descry and Rover left the tavern to borrow a handcart. (Anton would have gone, but the five-year-old woke up crying with discomfort and he was the only one who could get her to settle; by the time they were to leave, she was slumped on top of him and there was no way they were going to risk waking her up again unless they absolutely had to.)

The rest of them went around waking up the refugees in decent condition, quietly telling them what was going to happen and why. Only about half seemed to understand what was going on, children not included; the others had given up all attempts to maintain reason in the face of perceived safety. It was enough. By the time Descry and Rover returned, everyone who could be roused _was_ roused, and they were in the process of bundling people up and getting ready to move them downstairs.

“We have a problem,” Descry said quietly to Ghastly, while Rover made a bee-line for Skulduggery and Erskine. “We’re not going to make it to Tome’s cellar. They suspect we’re here. They’re canvassing the streets. The most we can do tonight is get our people somewhere they won’t be found overnight and wait for the patrols to end.”

Ghastly took that in as Descry moved on to pass the news to Anton and Rue. There was no question of changing the plan. This was their best chance of getting _anyone_ out alive, a bad one though it was. But they’d have to move quickly.

Descry stationed himself at the backdoor, keeping a mental ear on their surroundings and telling them to hurry up when appropriate. The refugees who were least injured but wouldn’t be able to walk the distance came down first and fastest, followed by those with injuries. The handcart was rickety; Ghastly wasn’t sure it would be big enough for everyone, and it was definitely going to be uncomfortable. Suddenly he was glad that most of the refugees were so incapable right now; at least they weren’t going to complain.

Then again, if they were properly cognizant maybe they wouldn’t need the handcart.

By the time they brought the children down the handcart was full. Descry and Rover had already tied the canvass down the open side, leaving some parts of the edges open for the refugees to breathe. The thirteen-year-old would never fit; Rover elected to carry her on his back, like a younger sister. Three of the others they were able to lay gently near the handrails, bringing the canvass up and over to keep them in.

The last was already gone. He hadn’t woken up in over a day. Nor did he again.

Ghastly looked at Descry’s pale face as he wrapped up the tiny body, murmuring a prayer, and wondered what it felt like to hear someone die. Then he decided he didn’t want to know.

“Are we ready?” he asked quietly. Anton nodded as he tied back his hair, rolled back his sleeves and put his hands to the cart’s rails, lifting it with a grunt. He looked and acted the most like a peasant, which made sense, as he had been one. Rover walked alongside him, the girl on his back. Descry carried the boy’s body and went with them. The others kept enough distance that they couldn’t be mistaken for the same group, but close enough that if Descry heard anyone important approaching they could come to help if needed.

Ghastly was behind with Skulduggery, in the shadows. Neither of them could lower their hoods. Neither could afford to be seen. Descry so rarely left Meritorious’s side that he wouldn’t be recognised, and in the shadows Anton and Rover weren’t likely to be either. Erskine would have to be careful, though, and Rue ...

There was no ignoring Rue. Fortunately he was so over the top that he wouldn’t be mistaken for being part of any of their groups. He strode just off to the side, his heeled shoes clicking on the cobblestone and his accented voice a belligerent mutter. Ghastly grinned inside his hood.

The grin didn’t last long. The place Descry had described was situated roughly in-between the tavern and Tome’s cellar, but that put it a dozen blocks away. Before they’d gone one, they saw two men on the street, ambling down it like they owned the town but lacking the uniform of the guard. Descry lifted a hand to pull his hood closer around his neck as if against the chill night air. Ghastly tensed, but the men only sneered at Anton as he passed. The cart’s wheels groaned. Their footsteps tapped the stone. Anton kept his head down, his hair shading his face, occasionally grunting with the strain of pulling the cart.

One pair of sorcerers. Two. A pack of three. Another pair. One lonely man, walking upright and proud. Ghastly made a mental note to avoid that one. Only a powerful sorcerer walked alone.                                                                                                                        

It wasn’t until he noticed that Anton had stopped, as if to change his grip, that he realised there might be anything else off about that single man. Not because Anton had stopped to change his grip, but because Descry had stopped to lean against the cart, and Rover had ambled up close, nudging him with his shoulder. Ghastly snapped to high alert, slowing his pace but not stopping, trying not to give any sign his own movements revolved around the cart’s.

Rue didn’t even slow down. He wandered closer, staring at the sky and—from what Ghastly could hear—trying to compose bad poetry when he ran into the cart. He stumbled, cursed, and Ghastly found himself impressed by Dexter’s balance when he managed not to turn an ankle in those heels.

“Blasted _peasants_!” he seethed, rubbing his foot, and kicked the cart’s wheel. “ _Do_ keep the roads clear for good upstanding men, won’t you! Idiotic ... foolish ... _cretins_ ... Frenchmen! Honestly!”

The last were muttered as Rue turned and ambled on. Descry’s head snapped up. He gripped Anton’s arm, and after a moment the Gist-user lifted the cart and kept moving—at the same pace, but with an extra roll of tension in his shoulders. Rover took a moment to follow, staring after Rue, but then Descry tugged his arm and the Elemental jerked. He looked back and Ghastly caught a glimpse of his deathly pale face; then Rover turned to trail after the cart.

Ghastly’s stomach clenched. He saw Erskine under the eaves of a building, in shadow, staring with horror toward that single man strolling down the boulevard. Ghastly almost didn’t want to know, but he looked anyway. It took a moment, because the light was so dim, but then a particular angle cast the man’s features into craggy clarity and Ghastly recognised Baron Vengeous himself.

Rue was headed right for him. Right for him, in a meandering pattern which meant that they would wind up on the very same stretch of street.

That realisation made Ghastly feel like his stomach had dropped out of his gut entirely, but at the same time his heart was a pounding heat in his chest. He didn’t dare watch in case the Baron noticed the attention. Instead he ducked his head and trudged on without having stopped, parallel to the cart.

Behind him he heard Rue’s sudden squawk of outrage. Heard the Baron’s smooth, low voice, amused and disdainful at once. Heard Rue spluttering, some kind of protestation, some kind of insult. Then they turned a corner and the voices were too distant to hear, and Ghastly’s back tingled with the prickling awareness and horror of a comrade left behind, his gut a mess of knots.

They couldn’t leave him. He stopped. Descry stopped in the same moment, looked back to meet his gaze with unnerving accuracy, and shook his head.

 _Trust him_ , he mouthed. Ghastly didn’t move. The he exhaled slowly, forced his shoulders to relax, and took one single, slow step forward. Then another. If Dexter was in trouble, Descry would be the first to know. But what if he got into trouble when they were too far away to help?

Still. They had a responsibility to the refugees. They were helpless. Dexter, for all his foibles, wasn’t. Another step. As a group they trudged on, passing the packs of Mevolent’s sorcerers. Most of them didn’t give them a second glance. Those that did only sneered, not willing to draw attention by actively targeting the ‘stupid mortals’ but with no compunctions about showing their disdain. It seemed an interminable amount of time before they could finally turned into the right alley, a dingy place which stank of sewerage but was big enough for the handcart. The end wall was broken and crumbling; it opened onto a broken-down courtyard turned into a pig-sty, before the owners had apparently grown too poor to keep their pigs. It stank, but at least there was some measure of fresh air in the courtyard and it would be safe for the rest of the morning. Mevolent’s people would have left the streets by day.

Anton, his hands trembling with exhaustion as they were, was stationed at the end of the alley to keep watch. All of them were distracted as they unloaded the refugees one by one, laying them out in the courtyard. Those at the bottom, as carefully as the others had been laid over them to ease the weight, were breathless and aching, and needed to be carried out even though uninjured. Ghastly and the others made rounds to coax a little more water into anyone they could rouse, but within half an hour of their arrival every one of the refugees were asleep.

The group gathered by the broken-down wall. Anton was sitting on the cart, the five-year-old girl in his arms. She’d refused to be picked up by anyone else, and then refused to let go. It was lucky, Ghastly thought, that Descry would hear the approach of anyone who meant them harm long before Anton would.

“We have to go back,” Rover said as soon as they were all in one place.

“We can’t,” Anton pointed out softly. “They will have moved on by now. We’d be risking ourselves for no reason.”

“No _reas_ —” Rover stared at him for a moment, speechless with surprise and hurt. “Dammit, Anton, we can’t leave him there with _Baron Vengeous_!”

“Anton’s right,” Skulduggery said. “We still have twelve people here to rescue. There’s nothing we can do.”

“There’s nothing we have to do,” Descry interjected before Rover could reply, turning to face them with a faint smile. Rover stared.

“What?”

The word was hardly out of his mouth before there came a grunt from the end of the alley, followed by the _squishsquishsquish_ of heels in sewerage water and an accented grumble. “—couldn’t have picked a better place to hide, oh no, we choose a _pig-sty_ of all things—”

Rue came tottering around the corner, sneering down at his footing, and looked up to find them all looking at him with various stages of smiles, relief and surprise. “What?” he demanded. “Don’t tell me you’ve all been dilly-dallying about all this time? Good God, men, do I have to do _all_ the—”

He was cut off because Rover vaulted over the cart and yanked him into a rough but tight embrace. “Don’t you _ever_ do that again, you idiot! What were you thinking?!”

Stiffly, his voice muffled because his mouth was pressed into Rover’s shoulder, Rue began, “Rover Larrikin, _if you please_ —”

“Shut up. Just shut up. You’re not allowed to talk. You’re not allowed to be an idiot. For the love of all the gods, you’re going to kill me with terror.”

“Does this mean you’re not _actually_ angry with him?” Erskine asked with a grin.

“Of course I’m angry with him,” Rover grumbled. “I’m enraged. I’m furious. Dex, you went up and told off _Baron Vengeous_ for having awful dress-sense. How could you, after I’d gone to all the trouble of forgiving you for idiocy?”

“He does have awful dress-sense!” Dex protested, and finally returned the hug with a shaken laugh. “And for the record, you’re the only reason I’m not falling down right now. Good God, my legs are shaking.”

“Oh, well then, here.” Rover turned and half-carried Dexter over to the cart, lowering him down on the edge of it. Dexter kicked off his shoes with a groan.

“ _Finally_. Those _shoes_ were killing me.”

“Your _accent_ was killing me,” Ghastly told him, grinning and moving closer to clap a hand to his shoulder and squeeze it. He was fairly sure they were all a bit shaky right now, with the obvious exception of Skulduggery. The tailor glanced up at Descry. “He really went up and told Vengeous off for having horrible dress-sense?”

“Really,” Descry said with as broad a smile as he ever wore, enough that even as pale as the mind-reader was he no longer looked quite so exhausted. “He was perfect. Vengeous was even amused, in a disdainful way. He just thought Rue was an idiotic English mortal—not even worth the time of killing.”

“Hey!” Dexter objected, lifting his head from where he was rubbing his feet. “I’m _perfectly_ worth killing, thanks very much!”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rover told him, and slapped his hands away. “Oh, here, let me. Your hands are shaking. You’ll never be able to walk again if _you_ do it.” The Elemental knelt, knees in the sewerage, and took hold of Dexter’s foot. “You’re an idiot,” Rover grumbled while Dexter the Adept looked down at him in surprised bemusement. “You’re an idiot who doesn’t know the first thing about a foot massage.”

The bemusement soon morphed into gratification, and Dexter leaned back on his hands with a sigh. “I’ll stop being an idiot _any_ time if it means you’ll rub my feet, Larrikin.”

“No, you won’t,” Erskine disagreed. “You’re physically incapable of not being an idiot.”

“Details.” Dexter waved a lazy hand, and then flopped on his back in the cart. “I’ve done my stint for today. I think I should get out of doing guard-duty. Good night, all.”

Erskine laughed and tossed a handkerchief onto Dexter’s face, then turned to re-enter the courtyard and get some rest of his own. “Sleep well. Don’t snore.”

“Lazy bastard,” Rover accused, but as Ghastly turned to follow Erskine he saw that the other Elemental was smiling, and he didn’t stop rubbing Dexter’s feet.

 

Ghastly woke the next morning blinking up at the overcast sky and with his shoulders hurting like he’d just gone six rounds with his mother. This wasn’t helped by the fact that he’d slept up against a wall. He shifted experimentally and then groaned, reaching up to rub his neck. Hauling twelve bodies up a shaft the day before had not done any favours for his back.

“Welcome back to wakefulness, sleeping beauty,” Rover said cheerfully, standing over him. Ghastly glared at him.

“I hate you.”

“Aw, everyone says that. Then they remember the night before.”

“You’re very cheerful this morning.”

“I _am_ very cheerful this morning. Dexter’s back and _Rue’s_ gone.” He raised his hands, tilting his ear skyward as if to listen to the blissful lack of a nasal voice. “Do you hear that? Or not hear it? No more grating voice!”

“If I didn’t know any better I’d think you didn’t like my friend Rue, Rover,” Dexter accused, wandering over. He was back in his usual suit, Ghastly was relieved to see, back to his blond hair and flashing smile and practical shoes. Rue’s shoes had been deadly weapons. Dexter deserved respect just for being able to survive on them for a week without falling over, let alone fronting up to Baron Vengeous while wearing them.

Rover shrugged. “What can I say? I’m very specific with my affections. Here, let me.” He shoved at Ghastly’s shoulder until the tailor moved, and the next thing Ghastly knew he had a pair of very skilful hands putting exactly the right pressure on his neck to ease the tension. With a sigh the tailor slumped into Rover’s grasp. No wonder Dexter had refused to move last night.

“I think I’m jealous,” Dexter grumbled. “Here I thought I was a special case.”

“Don’t be like that. I’m just an angel of mercy, lending aid and comfort to anyone who needs it.”

“Yes, Dex, share your good fortune,” Ghastly mumbled, just barely keeping his eyes open and then deciding it wasn’t worth the effort. “How’s everyone else this morning?”

“Descry was right about the body-count,” Dexter said. “We lost the last this morning. He says the rest will make it to Tome’s cellar, but after that will depend on the healers.”

“He wasn’t looking very good last night,” Ghastly noted.

“He wasn’t looking very good this morning either,” Dexter admitted. He didn’t say anything about what the mind-reader might be hearing, but Ghastly knew he was thinking about it. Marseille was a city overrun by the enemy. Ghastly didn’t want to know what Descry might have heard.

“He’ll be fine,” Rover said, still far more upbeat than Ghastly felt was fair. “Alright, so we still need to deliver our new friends, we still need to check the other safehouse, but inside of a day we’ll be out of the city, safe, on our way home from a successful reconnaissance. And no more Rue. What could be better than that?”

There was a pause, and then Dexter snickered. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe that?”

Rover’s hands stopped moving on Ghastly’s shoulders. He let out an objecting grunt, but the massage didn’t resume. Instead Rover spoke, incredulous and horrified. “No. _No._ Please. Really?”

With a sigh Ghastly forced open his eyes just in time to see Rue stride into the alley, stumble over a piece of wall-debris, and kick it spitefully with his high-heeled shoes. “We cannot leave this place too soon,” he declared in a nasal voice, and clapped smartly his hands at everyone. “Come on now, let’s get moving. Chop-chop, tally-ho!”

Then he whirled, tottered, caught his balance and strode out again. Some of the children giggled. The adults cognizant enough to be aware of what was going on stared in bemusement. Descry had one hand over his eyes, his mouth was twitching, and his shoulders were shaking. Skulduggery had his head tilted. Anton was shaking his head and sighing.

It took a moment before Ghastly realised who was missing. His lips twitched. “Where’s Erskine?”

Rover groaned and slumped, pointing accusingly at Dexter. The blond was bowed in two, laughing. “You. _You_. This is your fault. I can’t believe this.”

“Hey, if you want Erskine back, it’s easy,” Dexter said, wiping away his tears of mirth and straightening up with difficult. He grinned a charming, sunny grin and turned, throwing over his shoulder, “All you have to do is _ask_ him back.”

“Doomed. I’m doomed.” Rover buried his head in his hands. Ghastly leaned back against the wall, and laughed.

_~ finis_


End file.
